


A Scorpion in the Fire

by reapertownusa



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Hurt Dean Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-18
Updated: 2014-01-18
Packaged: 2018-01-09 03:07:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 7
Words: 26,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1140713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reapertownusa/pseuds/reapertownusa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean relives his memories of Hell when he's captured by a group of angels who aren't only seeking revenge against him, but are using the live video feed of his torture to try to force Sam to hand over Castiel. Sam, Castiel, Charlie and Kevin fight the clock, and Dean's own self-destructive tendencies, to rescue Dean and put him back together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Torture, non-con themes and references
> 
> Spoilers: Through early Season 9
> 
> Author’s Note: Written for spn_reversebang. Story is set in place of Slumber Party. The art and original prompt (http://shayasar.livejournal.com/109744.html) were done by the superbly fabulous shayasar. She is not only an amazing artist to work with, but a fantastic alpha reader, beta and co-plotter extraordinaire. It was an absolute blast building this story with her. Also, a million, trillion thanks to siennavie for her wonderful grammar beta work!

Dean rested the phone between his cheek and shoulder as he unloaded the groceries from his cart onto the conveyor belt. He finished by setting a bag of Sam’s favorite apples beside a stack of ground beef and steaks. 

He wasn’t sure why the world needed so many damn varieties of apples when he only got a few kinds of meat. All he knew for sure was that Sam liked them, and he hoped there was some truth to the whole an apple a day saying. 

“You’re sure you’re okay?” Dean asked.

Sam sighed on the other end of the phone. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“No reason. Just, you know… Never mind. I’m heading back your way.”

“Take your time, Dean. I’m still going through that storage closet. You don’t need to hurry back unless you want to help count bottles of newt eyes.”

Their latest find was less of a closet and more of a pit. Dean had leaned against the wall, and the floor had opened up beneath him. It was classic Indiana Jones, and he’d thought it was awesome until they’d found nothing but more shelves filled with jars and boxes of every disgusting thing witches would love to get their hands on. 

“You be careful down there,” Dean said. “I tell you that frickin’ place is cursed.”

“Dean, you bumping into a shelf doesn’t exactly constitute a curse.” 

“Dude, I swear that jar was filled with fermented baby puke.” Dean rolled his eyes at Sam’s chuckle even as the corner of his own lips turned up at the sound. “You won’t be laughing when it’s your shirt. Seriously, Sammy, just be careful, okay?” 

“Uh, yeah, sure. You, too, Dean. Just go grab a drink or something.”

Dean put away the phone and scanned the impulse buy rack as the old couple in front of him counted out pennies on the counter. He winked at the girl bagging groceries who kept looking his way. She smiled back, and he pretended to return to reading the magazine covers. 

This place’s magazines sucked as bad as the ‘90s soft rock playing over the speakers, but a bag of peanut M&Ms called him before the older woman behind the cash register greeted him and started scanning his groceries. 

He tossed the M&Ms between the tomatoes and mushrooms then turned his full charm on the girl. She was young, but not too young, with startlingly intense eyes. After his cart was packed, she leaned over the counter with a gaze that burrowed into him. There was something familiar there.

“I’ve seen you in here before,” she said. “It’s Dean, right?” 

The question took the smile from his lips. Part of the reason he made the drive out here to Hastings was because Russ’s Market was a larger grocery store. It’d be too easy to be noticed as a regular at the mom and pop shop back in downtown Lebanon. 

He kept his eyes on the girl as he handed the cashier a credit card that read ‘Dell Sterling’. The girl knowing his real name put him on alert, but she could have easily overheard it. This wasn’t the first time he’d been talking on the phone in here. 

“No, you must be thinking of someone else,” Dean said.

“I doubt that. It’d be hard to forget a face like yours.”

“Well, you got me there,” Dean said with a smirk. “But, sorry, not your guy.”

She pushed the cart forward and slipped out from behind the counter. Standing beside him, she was petite, far smaller than her stare had made her seem. She played with her light brown hair, tucking a few stray strands behind her ear as she looked up at him. 

“You could be my guy. How about we grab some drinks? You look like someone who could use a break.”

“Yeah, I’m babysitting,” he said as he stepped out of the way of the next customer. “It’s a real bitch, but I gotta get back to it.”

“Your loss. Can I at least help you out with your bags?”

Dean shook his head and wondered if he was ever this obvious when he thought he was playing it smooth. He had to admit he kind of liked it. With as long as it had been, his body ached to jump at the chance, but he really was babysitting and didn’t want to leave Zeke alone with his brother any longer than he had to.

“Maybe some other time.”

He parked the cart inside the door so he wouldn’t have to walk it back in and piled the paper bags into his arms. Dean peered from behind the mound before crossing out into the parking lot. 

A grungy old delivery truck had parked between him and the Impala. He knew where he’d left her, but didn’t like anything obscuring the view of his baby. 

He stopped at the corner of the truck when he heard footsteps approaching. Dean spun around, nearly dropping one of the bags. He relaxed only slightly when he saw the girl from inside. 

“You really can’t take no for an answer, can you?” he asked. 

She smiled in a way that sent a chill down his spine. Dean backed towards the Impala. He made it a couple feet before hands grabbed him from behind. 

The grocery bags hit the ground, and Dean was pulled to the far side of the truck. He couldn’t see who was behind him, but there were at least two of them and they were far too strong to be human. 

Dean fought free and drew his angel sword when he didn’t see black eyes. He kept his back to the truck and dodged down to avoid a punch, which dented the sheet metal behind him. He swung the sword, but the larger of the two angels threw him into the side of the truck with a thud that shook through his body. 

Dean stumbled to his feet, still clutching the sword with a white-knuckle grip. The largest angel grabbed Dean’s left arm and yanked him around hard enough that Dean heard a pop right before he cried out. Pain shot through his shoulder socket and his body went slack. 

By the time he was back on his feet, the sword had been retrieved by the other male angel and Dean’s arm hung useless at his side. He grunted when they shoved him back against the truck. 

The big bastard used his forearm to pin Dean’s throat. He could barely turn his head far enough to see the girl approaching from the back of the truck. 

There was amusement on her face as she sauntered towards him. She rested her chin on the other angel’s forearm to stare into Dean’s eyes.

“If you’d taken me up on that drink, you wouldn’t have ended up in so many pieces.”

“’Cause angel roofies sound so much better,” Dean gritted through clenched teeth. “Sorry, sweetheart. Like I said, not your guy.” 

The pressure eased from Dean’s throat. He was still gulping in air when the two male angels gripped his arms and shoved him back against the cold metal of the truck. 

The girl remained in front him. She traced her hand down his cheekbone. 

“Yet we have you.”

“Pretty sure that whole possession is nine-tenth crap doesn’t apply here, you crazy bitch.” 

Dean shook her fingers from his chin. She clutched his jaw again, digging her nails into his skin. 

“Don’t dirty yourself with it, Puriel,” the angel with the sword said. “Can’t you smell its stench?”

“That’s just the canned puke,” Dean said. “Least I got an excuse. I mean, seriously. You’d think a chick named after a hand sanitizer would know a thing or two about hygiene.”

Puriel leaned against him as she inhaled deeply. “The smell is strange and your words are senseless.”

“In that case, here’s a translation.”

Dean bucked forward to head slam her. He might as well have knocked his skull into a brick wall, but the hold on his arms loosened just long enough for him to slip free. He threw himself to the ground and rolled beneath the truck. 

The nerves in his shoulder screamed. Dean fought through the haze of dizziness and fumbled for his knife. He started to jerk up his sleeve when one of the angels grabbed his boot. The knife clattered to the ground, and the asphalt scraped against his belly as they dragged him back out towards them. 

Dean clawed at the bottom of the truck for anything to hold on to. A jagged piece of metal caught his sleeve. He tried to pull free, but the angels jerked him hard and the sharp edge gouged through his jacket to tear into his forearm. 

Hot blood soaked into the fabric of his shirt and spilled onto the ground where they dropped him back at their feet. Dean held both his arms tight to his chest. He stared out towards the apples that had rolled beneath the truck as he rode out the waves of pain. 

Above him, the angels argued. Puriel and the one with the sword gestured towards him without actually looking at him while the largest angel scanned the parking lot. 

Dean could hear cars passing beyond the shrubs and trees of the divider, but there were only a few cars in the lot and the truck blocked any chance of a passerby seeing them from the other side. He was at least thankful for that. Some good Samaritan thinking he could help wouldn’t do anyone any good. 

Dean waited until the angel was looking the other way before scrambling to his feet. He made it to his knees before the angel spun on him. A gorilla-sized hand clutched his head an instant before everything went dark.

***

The steady drone of the road had always helped Dean to sleep. When he crept towards waking, everything ached, but it usually did. He wasn’t sure how many times he’d nearly woken before the steady hum of the engine eased him back into a painless abyss. 

A sharp dip in the road jostled him the rest of the way to consciousness. Dean tried to sit up and clunked his already throbbing head. He tried to open his eyes only to realize they were already open. Everything was still black. 

Dean stretched out his legs and hit a barrier. One of his arms seemed to have fallen asleep, but he reached out with the other hand. There was another wall only inches from his shoulder. 

His heart raced. The familiar rumble assured him he wasn’t lying six feet under back in a pine box, but he could still taste the dirt in his mouth. He still wondered if there was enough air to breathe. 

He fought to focus, and when he did, it hit him like a sucker punch. He was locked in his own trunk. Those goddamn angels were driving his car. 

“Son of a bitch!”

The rhythm of the road shifted from cement to potholed gravel. They hit a deep hole too fast and it tossed him up. Dean cried out when he landed again. His fist reflexively slammed against the roof of the trunk. 

“Sorry, baby,” Dean mumbled before yelling towards the front of the car. “Hey, watch it up there!”

They stopped a minute later, sparing him the impossible choice of kicking out a taillight or trying to jimmy the trunk from the inside. While Dean lay listening, he made a mental note to pick up upholstery cleaner on his way back to the bunker after he kicked these angels’ asses. The carpet smelled like zombie or, worse, maybe Crowley. 

The creak of the front door opening pulled Dean’s attention back. He lay with his fist clutched when he heard the scrape of a key sliding into the trunk’s lock. 

The trunk lid flew open and a flood of direct sunlight blinded him. They were hauling him out before he could even open his eyes. He was too stiff to stand without their help, let alone fight. 

The sun was low on the horizon, which meant far more time had passed than he’d liked to think. Dean squinted as he scanned the area. 

They were parked out front of an old farmhouse that was overgrown with dead vines and about forty years overdue for a fresh coat of paint. Beyond that, there was nothing. It was only abandoned fields and scrub brush for as far as he could see in any direction. 

When his eyes fully adjusted, he looked back into the trunk. There was a dark stain in the carpet where he’d been lying. Make that two bottles of upholstery cleaner. That dried blood was going to be a bitch to get out. 

He wasn’t even sure where it had come from until he looked down at his right forearm, which was wrapped haphazardly in a bloody bandage. That explained why the thing hurt like hell and maybe why his head was fuzzy. He still wasn’t clear on why he couldn’t move his left arm or how he’d ended up in only a t-shirt.

Dean glanced between the two angels who held him. It was the first time he’d taken a good look at them and they were even bigger douchebags than he’d first imagined. They wore matching suits, had the same crew cuts, and the stupid dicks were both wearing sunglasses like they thought they were Secret Service agents of the Lord. 

“Just so we’re on the same page, I’m gonna kill you all,” Dean said. “Slowly. It’s bad enough you touched my car, but you couldn’t bother to lay down some frickin’ plastic? What’s wrong with you people?” 

The largest angel held him with an iron grip and jerked him away from the car. Dean stumbled to walk with him, but was more worried about what Puriel was doing. 

She’d changed from her store uniform to a white summer dress with a flower print that hung on her in all the right ways. Too bad she was a flaming psycho. He tried not to think about the girl who’d once lived in that body and who was hopefully long gone. 

Puriel’s shoes were also gone. She didn’t seem to mind walking barefoot on the sharp gravel or that she was molesting his car. Her fingers trailed over the Impala’s curves with the same possessive interest he’d seen when she’d grabbed his face. 

“Hey, hands off the sheet metal!” Dean said. “You winged asshats need to get your own ride and quit violating mine.”

The angel with the sword stepped forward. “Do you have any concept as to who I am?”

“Agent K’s replacement?” 

“Enough of your rambling,” the angel spat. “Word games can’t disguise the truth. I know what you are.”

“Yeah, I’m the hunter who’s gonna stab you in the face and you’re a winged dick. Now that we’re past introductions—”

“I was there.”

Something in the way the angel looked at him told Dean he didn’t want to know where there was. He also didn’t care. He wasn’t exactly in the mood to play twenty questions. 

“Yeah? Good for you. Hope you got the t-shirt.”

“I would suggest some respect. I am the angel Kushiel. I fought at Castiel’s side as we laid siege to Hell. I watched soldier after soldier fall to get to you. And when they found you…”

Dean averted his eyes to the rocky ground beneath his feet and lower. He didn’t need an angel to tell him what they’d found. His stomach churned at the jolted flashes of torn flesh that were seared into his memory. 

The soul before him had been everywhere. He’d been so far inside her with so much of her coating him that, even in his most vivid nightmares, he couldn’t sort out where one had begun and the other had ended. 

He heard the sounds still clear as day. There weren’t many noises like the wet plop of discarded flesh. The screeching wails still twisted inside him. He still heard the demons laughing in the shadows. He could still hear the moment when that taunting laughter had turned to screams right before it had all disappeared in a blinding flash of light. 

“There were seven in our group and what you see is all that’s left,” Kushiel continued. “The others were torn apart and what remains is broken. So many soldiers died. And for what? To raise the tattered remains of one twisted human soul? What a waste.” 

Dean’s head remained lowered. “You’re preaching to the choir, pal.”

Kushiel shoved him into the other angel, jamming his shoulder back into its socket in the same motion. The movement was so quick Dean hadn’t even fully realized that the angel had grabbed him before the pain spiked through his body. It barely registered that the scream had come from his own throat. 

Dean’s knees hit the gravel. He remained kneeling there, clutching his throbbing arm tight to his chest. He blinked the reflexive tears from eyes. The angel’s polished shoes stepped into view, but Dean kept his gaze fixed on his own dusty knees. 

“So that’s what this is about?” Dean asked when he could again speak. “All those angels died saving my sorry soul and now you’re gonna take it out of my ass?”

His tone was neutral. He hoped the answer was yes. If this was just angels with a grudge, then it was only about making him suffer and not about using him against anyone else. 

“You’re as conceited as you are worthless,” Kushiel said. “We don’t care about one dirty little soul.” 

Dean raised his bandaged arm. “Sure looks like someone cares.”

“We need your body, nothing more, and for now we need it alive.”

Kushiel nodded to the others. Puriel closed the trunk while the big, silent son of a bitch latched onto his arm. Dean bit back another cry at the tearing in his shoulder as they dragged him towards the darkened house.

***

Dean squirmed in the chair he was bound in, struggling to find a weakness in the knots that secured his wrists behind his back. He blinked away the blood that ran down to sting his eye. 

He’d tried to give the angels the slip before they’d tied him down, but all it had gotten him was a busted head. He blinked again to try to focus his vision. 

The room was dark with the only light coming in through a grimy window. The wallpaper was cracked and peeling and the curtains were more dust than fabric. As far as places to die went, it wasn’t epic. 

He didn’t know where Kushiel and Puriel had gone. The only angel he saw was the big silent bastard hanging in the corner like a shadow. 

Dean’s shoulder screamed and his wrists were raw, but he worked all the faster when he heard the creaking floor boards down the hall. He stopped fidgeting with the ropes when the other two angels returned. 

Dean’s brow furrowed as he watched Puriel approach with a bulky old Polaroid camera. He hadn’t seen a camera like that since he’d taken Sam to some kid’s birthday party when he was six. 

“Hate to be the one to break it to you, but film’s gone out of style since last you were here,” Dean said. “In case you didn’t get the memo, the Inquisition is also old news.”

Puriel smiled the same knowing smile she’d first sent his way. “This is my first time here, but this device will suit our purposes. My vessel special ordered film from a place called eBay. She was quite fond of it.”

“You really think torture porn was what Little Miss Sunshine had in mind when she placed that bid?”

Kushiel stepped forward to loom over him. “You have no right to question us.”

“Yeah, well, I haven’t signed a model release so you got no right to point that damn thing in my face. Guess we’re even.”

Dean squinted as a burst of light filled the dark room. He glared at Puriel when he realized it was nothing angelic, just the camera’s flash. She shook out the photo and crouched down to look back into the viewfinder. 

The flashes continued and only made his disorientation worse. Dean leaned his head forward and hooded his eyes. 

“That’s not even my best angle,” he mumbled with his chin tucked against his chest. “You should get over here for a close up.” 

“The photos will be clear enough for your brother,” Kushiel said. 

Dean’s head pulled up so fast it left him dizzy, but his warning glare to the angel didn’t falter. “You stay the hell away from my brother. If you even think about pointing a camera at him I’ll—”

“You’ll be silent and obey. Nothing more. I have no desire to touch that abomination. It’s the only thing in human form more sickening than you.”

“You’re just jealous God likes us best.”

Kushiel cracked a punch into Dean’s jaw. The angel continued ranting, but Dean’s head rang and his vision swam. He couldn’t make out the words. 

Dean tried to hide his face from the flashes, grunting in protest when strong hands grabbed his aching jaw and jerked his hair to force his head up. He squeezed his eyes closed against the bursts of light.

Kushiel shoved Dean’s head to the side when the flashes stopped. The angel glared down at him while wiping his hands clean on his pants. He joined Puriel at the table where she was sorting the photos between glancing at him.

Dean sneered back at them. He didn’t care what they did to him, but his brother would do all kinds of stupid when he got those pictures. If Zeke decided to jump ship because of these angels, they really would come to wish they’d left him in Hell.


	2. Chapter 2

Sam sped down Highway 281 in an old junker. The early morning sun lit the dormant fields of Nebraska’s farm country. It was a drive he’d made more than a few times with Dean, but Dean wasn’t here. 

Last night, Sam had dug some leftovers out of the fridge and he and Kevin had called it dinner. Meals weren’t something he’d ever given much thought to. Dean usually made them appear, and when he didn’t Sam grabbed something and it was all good. 

For reasons beyond Sam, Dean had really gotten into this whole Susie Homemaker thing. He was making actual meals and going on regular supply runs for actual, fresh food. It wasn’t as if Sam was complaining, it turned out his brother really could cook, but something about it didn’t fit. It just wasn’t their life.

On the other hand, everything had felt off this morning when he’d woken up to only the smell of coffee. Kevin had already hit the books and the kitchen was empty. Dean hadn’t come back last night. 

“This is Dean’s other, other cell. You know what to do.”

Sam pressed down harder on the gas. He steered with one hand while he ended the call with the other. He tossed the phone aside onto the worn passenger seat of the stolen car. If he knew what to do, he wouldn’t be on the verge of panic. 

He took a deep breath and forced himself to relax enough to focus. Dean might not even be in trouble. 

Sam couldn’t count the number of times Dean had hooked up with some random girl and lost track of time or wandered off on a small side case. But that was the old Dean. Even though Sam had told Dean to take his time, he’d known his brother wouldn’t. 

Dean had been acting strange. Aside from becoming Martha Stewart, Dean had been incessantly hovering like a mother hen refusing to leave him alone long enough to take a breath. If Sam didn’t know better, he’d think Dean was possessed. 

Regardless of what his problem was, Dean hadn’t left him alone this long since the angels had fallen. A voice in the back of Sam’s mind screamed that it wasn’t a matter of if something had happened to Dean, but of what. 

He’d already checked around town. The elderly owner of the local grocery store remembered Dean, most ladies did, but said she hadn’t seen him for weeks. He’d had to have Kevin dig through Dean’s receipts to see where his brother had been going.

Most of the receipts were for a store over an hour’s drive from the bunker. Dean had told him he changed things up to avoid being recognized, but given that Dean didn’t stock up when he went out, Sam was pretty sure it was as much an excuse to get in some time on the road. 

Dean may like having his own room and might spend a creepy amount of time tidying up the bunker, but he still loved that damn car. Sam found it hard to believe that Dean didn’t sometimes feel the need to just go. 

Sam pulled into the parking lot of Russ’s Market. A battered old delivery truck, a few sedans and a pickup were parked there. None of them were the car he wanted to see. 

There was no reason to think Dean was still here, but it was at least potentially somewhere his brother had been within the last twenty-four hours. Sam headed into the market in search of someone who looked like they might know something. 

After a quick scan of the checkout lines, he focused in on an older woman helping another employee make corrections at a cash register. He forced himself to wait for her to finish with the customer before intercepting her on the way back towards the aisles. 

“Excuse me, ma’am, can I ask you a few questions?”

“Of course.” When she spoke, she sounded both anxious and relieved. “Are you with the police?”

“Uh…yes, I am. I’m looking for a man—”

“A handsome young man with a large black car?”

Sam’s instant of relief shattered the moment he nodded and panic flooded the woman’s face. 

“Oh, my Lord. He is a serial killer, isn’t he?” 

Sam’s frown deepened. “Why would you say that?”

“Because he took off with one of my employees. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? Sarah’s such a sweet girl. She went out to help him with his bags and no one has seen her since.”

“Did anyone see anything out in the parking lot?” Sam asked.

“Well, not exactly. I couldn’t see a thing past that hideous truck out there, but that young man left a horrid mess with his groceries, and I do swear there was blood. Your sheriff told me I was imagining it all, but I knew I wasn’t. Oh, poor Sarah…”

Sam looked out the window to take another look at the truck. It did fully block the view of that portion of the lot. He’d assumed it was there making a delivery for the store, but the filthy, formerly white sides were unmarked.

“Do you know Sarah well?”

“Oh, yes, we attend church together. She has been acting a bit strange the last few days, but she’d never go running off like this, I swear it.”

“Strange how?”

“I don’t know… You see, it’s just not at all like her to follow the boys around. Really, she’s quite shy, but all of a sudden she’s been chatting with every young man who comes in here. She kept asking for a fellow named Dean if that helps anything.”

“It does,” Sam said. “Thank you for your time, ma’am. We’ll get to the bottom of this.”

He left out the fact that he wouldn’t be able to bring Sarah back to her. With the way both the angels and demons had been going through vessels, whatever was inside that girl had likely already burned through her. He had to focus on who he could save. 

Sam strode back out to the parking lot, checking to make sure he wasn’t being followed before approaching the truck. His hand rested beneath his jacket on the hilt of his angel sword as he walked around the far side. 

Swatches of grime had been wiped clean from the truck while dried blood remained alongside dents that looked disconcertingly like they’d been made by a body. Sam glanced in the driver’s side window before crouching down to inspect the asphalt. There was more blood and a glint of something beneath the truck.

He leaned down and stopped short of reaching for the knife when he saw an apple lying beside it. Sam rocked back on his heels with the bruised Spartan in his hand. It was the variety Dean had been buying him. Sam liked most apples, but Dean seemed to always be able to remember the name of this one. 

He hesitated to set the apple aside then retrieved the knife. He clutched the handle in his fist. He’d been praying the blood wasn’t his brother’s, but knew it was one more unanswered prayer when he saw that the blade of Dean’s knife was still clean.

***

Dean was beginning to think the angels were planning death by boredom. They’d more or less left him alone for the night aside from occasionally checking the ropes and tightening them several times. 

He wasn’t sure if he couldn’t feel his hands because of the lack of circulation or the lack of heat in the house, which left him shivering as he sat in only his t-shirt. 

They’d had a light on down the hall while he’d been left staring into the dark until the glow of dawn had started casting shadows. He’d nodded off a few times. He wasn’t sure for how long, but each time he’d been chased back to waking by hellfire. 

That was except for the two times that the rumble of his own car had woken him. The big guy had taken off in the Impala last night, despite Dean’s cursing. He’d returned with it about a half an hour ago. 

Now the angels apparently remembered he was here. They all stood around him like they were expecting him to entertain them or, more likely, were preparing to use him as a sacrifice. 

Dean cricked his neck. “Time for breakfast orders, already? I’ll take steak and eggs with a side order of bacon.”

“You have no more meals coming,” Kushiel said.

“That’s where you’re wrong, Cushy. You see I ordered the deluxe package, and I have to say so far I’m pretty disappointed with the service. The beds suck, the bathroom is even worse, and I can’t even get a damn coffee with my continental breakfast.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Puriel told the other angel. She leaned over Dean and spoke only loud enough for him to hear. “I’m finally going to get to see what all the fuss is about.” 

She tugged up the hem of his t-shirt and unbuckled his belt. Dean didn’t need to know what she was planning. He already knew no good could come of an angel getting into his pants. 

He kicked out, knocking her away. The chair he was sitting in tipped. Dean grunted as he hit hard on his right side. 

When his vision returned, he saw Kushiel standing over him an instant before a kick to his gut left his lungs screaming. Dean coughed, still gasping for air as he felt the angel unzipping his pants. 

His chest tightened as he tried and failed to kick Kushiel away. He stopped struggling long enough to breathe while he searched the room for a way out. 

“If it’s all the same to you,” Dean rasped, “I’ll stick with the hot one.”

Puriel came back into view, but she didn’t take Kushiel’s place. She walked past him to crouch behind the chair with a dagger gripped in her hand. 

Dean looked over his shoulder when no pain came. She was only cutting the ropes free from his wrists. 

He was too confused to take the opening before the strongest angel grabbed him. Dean’s arms were wrenched behind his back, spiking white hot pain through his body. The room started spinning all over again as he was hauled up. 

The combination of his unfastened jeans slipping down his hips and the iron grip restraining him shot raw panic through his system. Between Hell and Purgatory, he’d been here too many times before. Dean didn’t have to know which way was up to start fighting the second his feet found the ground. 

He pushed hard enough to knock the angel off balance, but they both tripped over the fallen chair and tumbled to the floor. The pain of the impact left Dean stunned. He couldn’t find the strength to get up, but his mind still screamed to get away. 

He rolled onto his stomach without really seeing the room around him. He dug his fingers into the floorboards and started to crawl away. 

Rough hands from behind forced him flat against the floor. He couldn’t get up again before one of the angels straddled him.

“Son of a bitch! Get the hell off me!”

Dean twisted to elbow the angel in the face, but his arm wouldn’t cooperate. He kicked his feet instead as one of the others jerked off his boot.

He growled in frustration at the angels and the weakness of his own body. He was struggling just to catch his breath with the weight of the angel resting on his bruised ribs. 

Dean could only watch as the largest angel grabbed his wrists. He winced as the grip tightened hard enough to grind bone and pinned his arms down against the floor. He tried to pull free, but wasn’t sure he could’ve moved his arm even if the angel hadn’t been holding it. 

He lay still over the dirty floor, buying a moment to catch his breath. “I get that none of you were getting any upstairs, but I’m not nearly as good as everyone says.” 

The weight over him shifted to settle on his hips. Kushiel leaned down over him as he spoke, “That’s not what Alastair said.” 

The cold words froze Dean where he lay. His fists clenched and he tried again to pull free. The part of his mind that he’d carefully shut away told him that if he looked up it’d be Alastair sneering down at him. 

It was Alastair’s voice he heard when Kushiel ordered him to hold still. He didn’t. He fought with everything he had, knowing defiance rarely brought worse consequences than compliance. 

Dean bucked hard against the hands that held him down. He only stopped when he felt the hot burn of a blade slice his back. 

The angel climbed off him and his arms were released. They pulled him up and Dean realized what they’d been doing when his t-shirt slid down off his shoulders. 

Dean glared at the torn fabric. “That was my favorite shirt.”

“If you don’t wish to lose anything else you’re attached to, I’d suggest being more cooperative,” Kushiel said.

The other angels tightened their grip as Kushiel stepped in closer. With a sharp jerk, the angel yanked down Dean’s jeans and boxers, leaving him standing exposed in front of them. 

Dean didn’t have time to translate the expression on Puriel’s face before he was dragged towards the next room. It was all he could do to remain standing with his pants around his ankles tripping him up. 

“I get that you’re all new down here…” Dean dragged his socks over the rough floor. “So you might be a little unclear on how this whole breeder thing works, but I’m not the bitch you’re looking for.”

“I was Hell’s observer.” Kushiel’s words were annoyingly calm. “I know the demons found you quite suitable. In fact, I believe you’re well versed in taking this position.” 

Through the doorway, a pair of heavy chains dangled from the beams of the ceiling. A shorter, matching set were bolted to the floorboards beneath. 

Dean threw every last ounce of strength he had into trying to fight free. He ended up tangled in his own boxers right before he was smashed into the door frame. 

By the time he came to, his pants and boxers had been replaced by shackles around his ankles and manacles secured around his wrists. He was still panting as he bit back a whimper at the pulling of his own weight against his shoulder. 

He could see Puriel and the big bastard, but couldn’t figure out where Kushiel was until he felt the fabric of the angel’s suit jacket brush against his bare back. Dean went rigid in the restrains. 

The angel’s hands grabbed his wrist to check the restraints. It was the only touch before all three of the angels walked out of the room.

Dean stared after them then looked up at the ceiling bolts. He gave the chains a useless tug. He’d been hung in worse places, in worst ways. At least his feet were still on the ground. At least there was a ground for his feet to be on. 

He listened for the angels. When he heard nothing, he checked out the room they’d left him hanging in. From what he could see, it was empty of anything other than the radiator bolted to the rat-infested wall. 

A light flared on in front of him. He hadn’t thought things could get much worse, but changed his mind when his eyes adjusted and he was left staring into the lens of a video camera.

***

Sam jogged down the stone steps from the old church to stop beneath the massive limbs of an oak tree that stretched over the sidewalk. He tugged the collar of his jacket up when he was hit with a cold wind. 

He was running out of places to check and he still had nothing resembling a helpful lead. Kevin couldn’t track Dean’s cell, and the truck had been stolen from a used car lot with no apparent connection to anything. 

The preacher from Sarah’s church was a fan of Buddy Boyle’s, but seemed obscenely well-adjusted. Sam doubted he had any direct connection to Bartholomew. It was little comfort given that it still left angels as the most likely candidates for having possessed Sarah and taken Dean. 

He pulled out his ringing phone, praying that it was Kevin with real news. His finger hovered over the call button when he saw it was something even better. It was a text from Dean with a set of coordinates followed by five extra numbers. 

With no codewords given, it was just as likely to be someone setting a trap as it was Dean. At least it was something and, either way, Sam was going. 

He called Keven as soon as he’d made it back to the car and written down the numbers. He tried to work through the extra digits while he listened to the phone ring.

“Sorry, Sam. I still got nothing,” Kevin said. 

“It’s okay. I might. Do the numbers 23686 mean anything to you?” 

“I don’t think so. What’s going on?”

“I don’t know. I need you to look up some coordinates,” Sam said. “It’s 40.586079 by -98.386205.”

“Yeah, hold on.” 

Sam sat with the engine idling, tapping his hand against the note on his lap while he listened to the silence on the other end. 

“Anything?” Sam asked. 

“Just a second. I’m not actually a trained secretary. Oh, wait, here we go. It’s near you in downtown Hastings. I’m pulling up an address…”

Sam drove away from the curb and turned back towards downtown. The area was mostly sprawling suburbs and hardly the isolate location Sam would have imagined for someone to hide Dean or arrange a meeting. 

“Looks like it’s the intersection of 3rd Street and North Kansas Avenue,” Kevin said. 

“What’s there?”

“There’s a real estate office, a post office…”

Sam glanced back down at the five extra numbers. “It’s the post office.” 

“Why would Dean be at the post office?”

“I have no idea.” Sam took a hard right when he saw the sign for 3rd Street. “I’ll call you back.”

He jammed the phone into his pocket and pulled into the tire store lot across the road from the post office. After several minutes of watching the area, he didn’t see anything unusual. Cars came and went at a normal rate, and customers were coming and going with their mail.

Sam didn’t know what, if anything, to expect. He held his gun down below the steering wheel and checked the clip before getting out of the car. He felt for the demon blade and readjusted his angel sword then crossed the street. 

Inside the post office, there was a woman at the front counter and two people in line. One of them was filling out an address label while the other talked on a phone. Only the woman behind the counter sent him a quick smile as he entered. Everyone else went about their business. 

He caught a glimpse of a man heading back towards the P.O. boxes and followed at a safe distance. The man retrieved his mail and headed back towards the door by the time Sam turned the corner. 

Sam switched his attention to the P.O. boxes themselves once he was sure the area was clear. He glanced back at his note and started checking the number plates as he walked down the rows of boxes. A few steps later, he found Box 23686. 

He looked over his shoulder before blocking the view of the box with his body and picking the lock. A manila mailing envelope sat inside with his name clearly written on the front. 

He grabbed the padded folder that hadn’t even been sealed, let alone gone through the mail. The folder was full of Polaroid photos. Sam’s throat was already tight before he pulled out the first one. 

It was a photo of Dean. His face was bloody and someone was gripping his head, forcing him to look towards the camera. 

Sam’s own head spun as he dropped the photo back into the folder. He checked the box for anything else and for any sign of being watched before rushing back out to the car. 

He collapsed into the driver’s seat and slammed the door closed. He shook the folder, knocking the photos out onto the seat beside him where Dean should be sitting.

Sam flipped through the pictures. Most of them were close-ups of Dean. His brother looked disoriented and was obviously hurting. It only got worse when Sam righted the last one. 

Dean hung suspended. His shirt was gone, and he was afraid or out of it enough that he wasn’t hiding his fear. That fact alone both terrified and enraged Sam. 

Beneath the last photo was a torn piece of graph paper with a URL, username and password on one side. On the other side, there was a note written in block letters.

'Sam Winchester give us the traitor Castiel or your brother will suffer'.


	3. Chapter 3

Chains clanked as Dean shifted his weight. Even his socks were gone, and the feeling in his fingers wasn’t far behind. He wiggled his hands and gave another futile tug at the restraints. The bolts were some of the most secure he’d ever seen, which was saying something. He wasn’t going anywhere. 

His shoulder burned and his head throbbed to the point that focus was next to impossible. At the moment, he was more fixated on just being able to put his arms down than even getting out of here. 

He looked up at Kushiel when he realized he wasn’t alone. The angel was walking circles around him with Dean’s angel sword gripped in his hand.

“You angels really got some screwed up ideas about porn,” Dean said.

“I know how you liked it in Hell, but we’re not the foul superficial creatures you are. It’s the damage being done that’s on display, not you.”

Kushiel cut the blade over Dean’s chest and followed immediately with a second, parallel cut that stopped just short of his right nipple. Dean gritted his teeth and waited until he could speak before looking up from the cuts to glare at the angel. 

“Yeah, right,” Dean said. “So you’re taping this crap for the same buddy that’s pinning my picture up on his wall?”

“I don’t know what Castiel will be doing with the photos.”

Dean’s bravado faltered at Cas’s name. They hadn’t said who they were using him as bait for, and he’d been hoping it was his brother. 

Sam could defend himself, but not Cas, not as a human, which was exactly why Dean never should have gone along with Zeke’s stupid ass ultimatum. He’d had Cas where he was safe, and then he’d panicked. It was his fault Cas was back out on the streets for these freaks to pick up. 

“Where is he?” Dean asked. 

“I told you it knows nothing,” Puriel told Kushiel. “It’s a waste of time cutting it up. We should keep it until we have an actual lead on Castiel.”

Usually Dean would be completely on board with any plan that involved not hacking him to bits, but there was something in Puriel’s tone and the way she looked at him that said he wouldn’t like her plan any better. 

It didn’t matter much either way. He knew there was no easy way out of this for him. Relief still hit hard with the knowledge that Cas wasn’t strung up in another room of this dump. 

“Castiel is too much of a coward to show his face on his own,” Kushiel said. “But if the threat to this one is great enough, Sam Winchester will be properly motivated to flush out the traitor.”

Dean narrowed his eyes on Kushiel. “You need to shut your damn mouth about Cas. I’m the only one who gets to bad talk him and if you even think about laying a hand on him…”

“That’s quite a notion coming from you, the thing that corrupted Castiel in the first place. It’s your fault that our formerly great brother has fallen to what he is now.”

“Last I checked, you’ve all fallen,” Dean said. 

“Another corruption for which you played your part.” 

“You’re right. This is on me. All of it. I’m the one who threw this world down the crapper. I’m the one who screwed Cas over. You want someone to pay? I’m right here! Do your worse and we’ll call it even.”

“For a skinned ape, you think yourself quite powerful. You were merely the trigger. Castiel made his choices and he will pay for bringing Heaven to its knees.”

“If one angel could bring Heaven down then I guess it must’ve not been all that to begin with.”

“Enough of your blasphemy.”

Dean’s head rang when the angel’s fist smashed his nose. He chuckled even as he tasted the coppery tang filling his mouth. 

“If you really knew so much about me and Hell, you’d know you’re gonna have to try a lot harder than those girly love taps.”

Dean’s breath stilled in his chest as the angel stepped behind him and traced the blade over his throat. 

“I know I can’t hope to compete with your carving skills, but I’ve tortured more than a few souls in my days and you’re fragile here. Tomorrow, you won’t wake up whole, and with Heaven closed, just where do you think you’ll go once I’m through with you?”

Dean’s heart thundered in his chest as the angel drew the sword over the side of his neck and sliced across the back. He felt the burn and hot flood of blood. It streamed over his shoulders to collect in the dip of his collarbone before streaming down his chest. 

It didn’t matter whether or not the gates of Heaven were open to human souls, he knew that wasn’t where he was going. Part of him had never left Hell. Part of him was there even now as the blood flowed down his skin. 

He prepared himself for the next cut Alastair would make. The blade would slice down his back, scraping against his spine until Alastair could reach in to start ripping free the vertebrae, one by one. He could see the familiar smile on the demon’s lips as Alastair walked around idly tossing one of the bloody bones. 

Dean blinked when he looked up. The angel stood back in front of him with blood dripping from the sword, but no bone in his hand. 

Dean swallowed hard then raised his brow. “That little hickey the best you can do?”

He hadn’t realized Puriel had left until she poked her head back into the room. “We’ve got a customer.”

“What’re you charging for this crap?”

Neither of the angels answered him. Puriel walked towards the camera while Kushiel stepped away. Dean hoped like hell that the video’s viewers would only be random dicks looking to get off on his guts being spilled. 

***

Sam sat at the main table in the bunker in front of the laptop. The URL had taken him to a login screen and that to a video feed. Fear and rage again tangled inside him as he watched the pain crease his brother’s features. 

Dean’s torso was bare and his arms outstretched. The bloody bandage wrapped around his forearm did nothing to assure Sam that Dean hadn’t already lost too much blood. More blood smeared the side of his face and seeped from cuts that marked his bruising chest and abdomen. 

Like the photos, the area around Dean was nondescript. Aside from whatever light they were using for the camera, the room was dark with only the vague shape of a curtain covering a window in the background. 

Dean was centered on the screen looking towards someone Sam couldn’t see. Sam glanced down at the photos he had laid out over the keyboard. 

Whoever these people were, they were going to a lot of trouble to put this together. Sam had to hope that meant they wouldn’t be in a hurry to kill his brother, at least not until they had what they wanted. 

Sam looked up from the photos when he heard breathing. It took him a moment to realize the uneven sound was Dean’s breaths coming through the speakers, which had been silent a moment earlier. 

A girl stepped into the front of the frame. Dean glared at her before following her gaze towards the camera. 

His brow creased as he seemed to be trying to decide who was on the other side of the camera. It didn’t look as if Dean knew much more about what was going on than he did. 

“As you can see, we have your brother,” the girl said. 

“Sam? Sam!” Dean called out. “Don’t you dare listen to this crazy bitch.”

The girl stepped back to stand beside Dean. She looked up at him before sliding her fingers down his hip with a possessive touch that made Sam’s blood run cold. Dean tried leaning away, but her hand followed him. 

“We’ll be sending you coordinates to a farmhouse near Wallace. Deliver Castiel there if you’d like to make an exchange or don’t and we’ll keep this one.” 

Her finger traced Dean’s cracked lip. Dean turned his head away and she pushed her hand into his hair instead. Sam curled his fist when he saw the barely concealed panic in Dean’s eyes. 

“We’ll keep hurting him,” the girl said. “It will keep getting worse until we have Castiel or the clock hits zero.”

The clock was at the bottom right hand corner of the screen, displaying the countdown in big red numbers. 

“This place is swarming with these winged freaks,” Dean said. “There’s a whole goddamn army of them. Sam, you just keep Cas the hell away from here.”

A man stepped into the frame. He was wearing a suit and holding an angel sword. The choice of clothing and weapon only confirmed Dean’s warning. These were angels they were dealing with, in which case, there could easily be an army.

“You can both stay away,” the man said. “I’ll take pleasure in gutting this tarnished thing.”

The words triggered a look in Dean’s eyes that Sam didn’t understand. Dean grunted, biting back a cry as the angel slashed the sword across his abdomen, leaving a deep gash in its wake. 

“No!” Sam shouted. “Dean!”

He knew neither Dean nor the angels could hear him, but Dean did look up. His expression was desperate as he stared straight into the lens. 

When Dean spoke, his voice was rough and on the edge of breaking. “Zeke, you keep my brother away from here. You hear me, Zeke?”

“Who are you speaking to?” the man demanded.

Dean didn’t answer the question Sam also had before the sound cut out. Sam could still see that the man was yelling words that made Dean flinch. 

Dean shook his head and the man clutched his throat, strangling him. Dean stared up at the ceiling gasping for empty breaths until his face was red and his body was shaking. 

Sam wanted to reach through the screen and crush the angel. He didn’t know what the man wanted out of Dean, but he knew his brother was far too stubborn to give it.

Dean’s head began to tip to the side, his eyes sliding closed right before the angel shoved him and walked away. Sam’s stomach twisted as he watched Dean sway in the restraints and struggle for consciousness as much as he fought to recover whatever footing he’d had. 

The numbers counted down, telling Sam that he had less than thirty-three hours to find Castiel, figure out what ‘Zeke’ meant, and save his brother. The emptiness in Dean’s eyes told him that he didn’t have nearly that long.

***

Dean’s throat ached with every breath, but at least the breaths were coming again. Kushiel had an even shorter fuse than Dean had thought. Not that it mattered. There was no chance this ended any way but bloody. 

They’d do what they wanted with him. All he could do was give them hell and keep Sam and Cas away from it. It’d be a relief knowing that Sam wasn’t likely coming if it wasn’t because of the thing Dean had shoved up inside him. 

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. They were supposed to be starting over. He’d told himself he was through with the lying, at least to his brother. Sam deserved the truth, but sometimes it took lies just to get through the day. 

“So that’s your great plan?” Dean asked. “You’re gonna hack me up and tape it for Sam? Why don’t you try uploading him something we don’t already have in our home video collection?”

The angel pointed the sword at Dean’s throat, drawing the tip down his adam’s apple. Dean held his breath while part of him wanted to shove forward to jam the blade into his throat. Their ultimatum wouldn’t be worth crap if he were already dead. 

“Your brother is watching now,” Kushiel said. “We’re streaming him the footage live.”

“So you guys are familiar with 21st century technology after all. Awesome.” Dean looked back into the camera once the pressure of the blade left his throat. “There’s too many of them, Sam. Either way…”

“Save your lies. Your brother can’t hear you now. All he’ll be hearing is your screams.”

Dean might have lied to Sam about Zeke and how many angels were here, but he wasn’t lying to the angels. Sam really didn’t know where Cas was and Zeke wouldn’t go looking. 

The fact that Cas alone had given Zeke the heebie-jeebies assured Dean that Zeke would keep Sam as far as possible from a place that he thought was wall to wall angels. 

Sam really wasn’t coming and, this time, it was okay. Things were different now that he’d seen what Sam could have without him. 

The world might be more screwed than usual, but Sam had managed to walk away from it all before. He could do it again. Dean would just have to hope that Cas managed to keep his head down. 

“Pray that Castiel comes,” Kushiel said. “If no one comes for you, you’ll relive being dismantled in Hell only I won’t put you back together.” 

Dean swallowed down the sinking feeling in his gut. It was one thing to know he was going to die. That wasn’t anything new, but he didn’t want it to be like this. He didn’t want to be there again.

“You might need to change your plan there,” Dean said. “If you just keep hacking on me, I’ll be long dead before anyone stumbles on this place.”

“I suppose.” Kushiel looked between the sword and Dean’s bloody chest. “You only have so much flesh to cut, but this isn’t the only way in which to break skin.”

The angel turned away and walked towards the closet. Dean prepared himself for shelves of rusty farm implements, but the closet was as empty as the rest of the room. 

“So you are just gonna bore me to death?” Dean asked. “Bang up job so far.”

Kushiel slipped out of his suit jacket and took an old wire hanger off the clothing rod. Instead of hanging up the jacket, he tossed it to the floor and shut the closet door. 

He strolled back towards Dean and stood in front of him, stretching the hanger out of shape until it was two, long parallel lines of heavy wire. Dean clenched his jaw. Being beaten with a wire hanger wasn’t exactly the change of pace he’d been looking for. 

“You keep talking like Alastair’s got nothing on you and the best you can come up with is a damn hanger?” Dean asked. 

The angel walked behind him. “I know it’s not the barbed whips you grew accustomed to nor is it the fiery one I favor, but it’ll leave the nerves intact. And I can make you wish it didn’t.” 

Dean jumped as a hand stroked over his shoulder and trailed down over his ass, exploring his unmarked skin. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Cushy. Nobody likes a tease.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Dean saw the angel rear back the wire, but Kushiel stopped when Puriel traipsed back into the room. 

“I still say this is pointless,” she said. “We shouldn’t be in such a hurry to break it.”

“This soul was shattered long ago. This wretched thing slept curled at the feet of the greater demons between bathing itself in the blood of souls.” Kushiel turned his focus on Dean. “I’d bleed out your soul if I could.”

“That makes two of us,” Dean said. 

His words were as numb as he felt. He didn’t care that this angel had seen him. It was everything that he’d done and the fact that if Kushiel had seen him, then Cas had too, and that dumb son of a bitch had still dragged him back to screw up this world all over again. 

“Do you at least want me to move the camera around?” Puriel asked.

“No. His face will say enough.”

Dean set his jaw, determined to prove the angel wrong. He grunted at the first fall of the wire over his back. It wasn’t so bad. He could deal with it. 

At least that’s what he thought until he realized that first strike was only the angel taking aim. After that, the wire fell hard and fast, so fast the full searing of one hit didn’t fire through his nerves until the next stroke had already fallen. 

He couldn’t keep track of when the wire was and wasn’t actually touching him or keep enough air in his lungs. His entire backside burned. He struggled to stay aware enough to stop himself from crying out. He’d already given up on masking the pain on his face. 

“Do you even remember how many souls you tore through?” Kushiel asked.

Dean only barely heard the question, but heard enough. He shook his head, cursing as the wire sliced the back of his thigh. 

“How many of them did you flay to nothing? Time and again.”

Kushiel slowed his pace. He used the strikes to enunciate his words as he slashed over previously split skin. 

When the angel stopped, Dean lost the advantage of having one new hit to focus on. It all hit him. Not just the whipping or the fact it was the least he deserved, but how stupidly pointless it all was. 

“What do you care?” Dean asked. “You can’t honestly give a rat’s ass about what I did to some damned souls down in the Pit.”

“True.” Kushiel leaned in, brushing the wire over Dean’s side. “But you do. You care more about those soon-to-be demons than all the angels who were lost for nothing because you were too weak to keep your hands off a razor that belonged in your own flesh!”

Dean didn’t even try to choke down the scream when the next fall of the wires cut into his side.


	4. Chapter 4

Sam stood hunched over, bracing himself against the table. His fingers ached from clutching the edge of the wood. His bangs flopped forward over his eyes as his unfocused gaze rested on the photos still laid out over the keyboard. 

He should put them away. They weren’t helping anything, but moving them would mean that they were really there. It would mean that the sound crackling through the laptop’s speakers was really his brother screaming out there somewhere while Sam was still here. 

Sam couldn’t keep watching knowing all he could do was wait, but not looking didn’t help. He didn’t have to look to see. 

The wire swooshed through the air with a steady rhythm, each whistle ending in a sick, quiet thud against flesh. Even looking down, Sam knew well enough where and how hard the wire struck his brother. He could hear it in the muffled grunts and desperate gasps that were all too familiar. 

Sam stared at the photo of Dean hanging from the ceiling with fear revealed in his eyes. He still knew when the wire cut into skin that had already been sliced. In his mind, he could see Dean tilt his head back, face twisting in pain, as the hoarse cry ripped from Dean’s throat. He knew how much it had to hurt for Dean to stop fighting to keep quiet. 

Sam looked to his phone on the table beside the laptop, willing it to ring. He’d already made every call he could. Charlie was coming, but she was the last resort. Cas was the one he needed and the one he couldn’t find. 

He’d already called the most recent number he had for Cas, but there’d been no answer. He didn’t know if Cas still had the phone or if he’d even listen to a message from them given how quickly he’d ran out of here last time. Sam didn’t even know if Cas was even still alive.

Sam looked up when the wire went quiet. It clinked to the floor leaving only Dean’s breathless gasps. 

The angel still stood behind Dean. The sleeves of his dress shirt were rolled up. Formerly pristine white was splattered with a fine spray of blood.

Out of the corner of his eye, Sam saw Kevin with an armful of books at the end of the table. He was standing as frozen as Sam, staring at the screen where Dean was left alone in the frame. 

Dean’s chest heaved with each sharp intake of breath. Thin rivulets of blood trickled down his side from the spots where the bend of the wire had cut deepest. Sam could only see stray glimpses of the angry red lines that he knew fully crisscrossed Dean’s backside. 

Kevin looked numb as he set down the books. “What did they mean?” His voice was quiet as he sorted the books into no particular order. “What did Dean do?”

Sam shook his head. He was nearly as angry about what they’d said as what they’d done. The sound had come on part way through the whipping, but he’d heard enough to know they were using Dean’s greatest weakness against him. Those words would cut his brother far deeper than any wire or sword ever could. 

Dean wasn’t looking into the camera anymore. His head hung low to hide his eyes. Sam tried to tell himself that it was a droplet of sweat that dripped from Dean’s nose even as he saw his brother shiver.

Kevin sagged back into the chair and flipped open a book. “Why are you still here anyway? I thought you were going out to find Castiel.”

Sam stared at Kevin while he searched his mind for an answer. He didn’t know why he was still here. He had said he was leaving, but couldn’t remember why he hadn’t. It was impossible to focus on anything knowing how much Dean was hurting and that he had no good way to get his brother out of it. 

It was the kind of stupid plan Dean would come up with, but even driving around hoping to see Cas standing on a street corner would be more productive than standing here listening to his brother’s hitched breaths. 

Still, something inside him screamed not to leave this room. Even though Dean wasn’t here, Sam could hear his brother breathing as if he were standing right beside him. It felt like he should be able to do something.

Sam glanced to the time on the clock. They were already over an hour down. He grabbed his phone and dialed Castiel’s number again. 

“Hello?”

“Cas? It’s Sam.”

“Sam? Why are you…?” Cas’s confusion shifted to concern. “Where’s Dean?”

“Did you get my message?” 

“I haven’t received any messages. Someone called earlier, but it only rang once and it wasn’t Dean.” 

Sam stood silent as he tried to remember what he’d even said in his message. He’d called Cas and the phone had rang, but when he really thought about it, the next thing he remembered was Kevin coming back into the room. 

“Sam? What’s happened to Dean?”

“Angels took him.”

“Who?” 

“I don’t know,” Sam said. “One of them talks like he saw Dean in Hell. Dean also mentioned someone. Zeke.”

“Zeke? No, I don’t know of any angels by that name, but there is only one surviving angel who directly witnessed Dean in Hell. Kushiel was an observer of Hell and went on to become one Heaven’s most skilled torturers because of it.” 

Sam looked back at the now quiet laptop. Though the sound was off, the angel was back in the frame. He slapped Dean with a vicious backhand before grabbing Dean’s hair and jerking his head up. Sam’s own breath caught in his throat when he saw Dean’s red-rimmed eyes. 

The angel was speaking words Sam couldn’t hear. Dean sneered. Sam could read the familiar ‘bite me’ on Dean’s bloody lips. 

Dean’s head snapped to the side as the angel punched him, renewing the flow of blood from his swollen nose. Sam winced when Dean spit the blood back into the angel’s face. 

Worse, he saw Dean flinch, too, right before the angel drove his fist into Dean’s gut. Dean knew full well what he was doing. 

“Sam? Kushiel is extremely dangerous and not to be underestimated. Most of his garrison was lost in the siege and, as misplaced as his blame is, he believes he has every reason to hate Dean.”

“Yeah, I’m getting that.”

“Is he there with you?” 

“Not exactly. Cas, they want—”

“I know what they want. Kushiel is fully aware of my bond to Dean. I know what they’re capable of. Just tell me where they are.”

From the intensity of Cas’s demand, Sam could nearly imagine that he was speaking to that seemingly all-powerful angel they’d first met. He wanted to be able to tell Cas where Dean was and have the angel sweep in to zap Dean right out there, but he wasn’t talking to an angel. He was talking to a human who was still discovering his own limitations. 

“Cas, you can’t go.”

“I’m not leaving Dean to him.”

“And neither am I. We’re getting Dean back, but Cas, you’re only human. If you just hand yourself over, they’ll kill you both. We have a plan. We just need you here.”

“Of course. I’ll be there as quickly as I can.”

Sam ended the call and tossed the phone down on the table. Knowing that Cas was coming was something, but it wouldn’t be enough if he couldn’t come up with an actual way to take out an army of angels without getting Dean killed. 

“So what is your plan?” Kevin asked. 

“We’ll figure something out.”

“Well, if you don’t have one. Do you want to hear mine?”

“You have a plan to rescue Dean?”

“Not exactly, but I might have a weapon. One that could maybe annihilate every angel within a city block. That might be cool, right?”

“There’s an angel bomb?”

“I think so,” Kevin said. “I mean…yeah, I’m pretty sure.”

“When were you gonna mention this?”

“I didn’t want to say anything earlier because I wasn’t completely sure, but it’s definitely there. I just need some more time to figure it out.”

“Do what you can. It’s the best shot we got.”

Right now, it was Dean’s only shot. On the screen, blood dripped from Dean’s face to splatter over his chest. His head was still lowered, watching the tip of the angel’s sword where it pressed against the center of his tattoo. 

The angel twisted the blade to bury the tip into Dean’s flesh. He went on to trace the outline of the tattoo even as Sam willed him with everything he had to stop. Dean’s head tilted back. Sam didn’t need sound to hear the scream.

***

Sam looked up from his book when he heard a banging sound. He’d thought it was either the speaker or his imagination, but Kevin was also looking around.

“Was that Crowley?” Kevin asked. 

Sam didn’t answer, but he knew it wasn’t. The sound had come from the opposite direction. 

He motioned for Kevin to stay put while he headed towards the stairs with his gun drawn. The banging echoed down the stairwell and he relaxed only slightly when he realized it was coming from the entrance. 

He put the gun away and pulled open the door when he heard Charlie’s muffled shouts. She slipped in and saluted him. 

“Got your SOS. The queen is reporting for duty.”

“Thanks for coming, Charlie.”

“Always happy to help. Except with, you know, shape shifting monsters that bleed back ooze because…eew.” She skipped down the stairs, stopping halfway down to survey the room below. “I almost forgot how total bad ass this place is. Dean is so right, Batman has nothing on you guys.”

Sam’s smile was pained. This was Dean’s Batcave. It was Dean’s home. Sam would never appreciate it like his brother did, and he’d never be able to stay here without him.

The bounce left Charlie’s step when she saw Kevin’s face etched with grim lines. He was staring at the laptop. Charlie held onto the railing as she walked down the last few steps, following Kevin’s gaze. 

Charlie stopped in front of the screen. She watched it for a moment, confusion flowing over her features before she looked down at the photos. Her finger traced over them, stopping at the note. 

She read it before looking back at Sam, tentative relief pushed down the horror in her eyes. “Okay, joke’s on me. I mean, this is cool. It’s a game. You got all the clues and the clock and it’s just a…” 

Charlie glanced back to the screen where the angel slashed his sword over Dean’s side. Blood flowed from the gash. Charlie turned her head away.

“Just a crazy realistic insanely screwed up LARPING game. I mean, who uses film cameras anymore, right? You guys just found an old camera in the closet here and—”

“It’s not a game, Charlie.”

She looked at Sam, silently pleading for him to take the words back. When he didn’t, she shook her head. “No, not Dean. That can’t really be happening.”

“They really have Dean. They’re really hurting him.” Sam choked down his own anxiety to keep his voice calm. “I need to know if you can track the feed.”

Charlie swallowed hard then nodded. “The feed. Right. That’s why I’m here.” She plopped down into the chair in front of the laptop and flexed her fingers. “I can track anything. I just…” Charlie gasped as the angel jabbed the hilt of the sword into Dean’s ribs. “That is so not cool! That guy needs to back the…” 

“Charlie, I need you to focus.” 

“Yeah, focusing now.” 

Her hands were unsteady as she moved aside the photos to clear the keyboard. She made the player window smaller and began opening an array of other windows. Charlie’s posture straightened as she slipped into work mode. Her fingers danced over the keyboard as she spoke.

“So I can scramble our side of the feed so they can’t trace our location, if they haven’t already. And let’s see…maybe...”

There was only the clinking of keys on the keyboard as Charlie leaned into the monitor, her attention swinging between two windows. 

Charlie turned around in the chair and looked up at Sam. “The good news is they didn’t bother to encrypt their signal.”

“And the bad news?”

“The signal is kind of coming from…orbit so unless they’ve taken Dean up to the Death Star, they’re using a satellite connection and bouncing the signal around the world.”

“So there’s no way to trace it?”

“I didn’t say that. If there’s a signal it can be traced, but it’s gonna take a while. Usually, I like a challenge, but I really don’t work well under pressure. It’d sure be nice if they were just using a cable connection or cell phone.”

“They texted me from Dean’s phone, but we already tried tracking it.”

“Like through the service’s back door? Oh, please. Give me the number and I’ll show you how the big kids track a call.”

Charlie typed in the number and ran through the code for a minute before pulling up a new browser window and opening a map program. 

“So the last call was made somewhere between these towers.” She pointed to a wide span on the map in an area with few roads. “Sorry. It’s usually more precise, but there are only a few towers over there. I’ll work on tracking the feed.”

“Whatever you can do.”

Sam looked back at the map before Charlie closed the window. It already gave him the information he needed. 

Those cell towers were well into the heart of central Nebraska while the Wallace coordinates where they’d told him to take Castiel were in western Kansas. They didn’t have any intention of returning Dean.

***

Dean pulled himself back towards consciousness when he heard footsteps coming towards him. His eyes focused on Puriel who held a glass of water in her hands. She stepped beside him and set the glass to his bloody lips. 

Dean wanted to spit the water back in her face. There was no telling what they could have put in the water, but his body ignored every warning his mind screamed when the cool liquid hit his tongue. His throat was so raw it burned. He grimaced as he swallowed. 

Despite the pain, he gulped the water down as quickly as he could. He was oblivious to anything else until he’d had enough to quench his thirst. He sipped slower and opened his eyes again to see the angel staring at his throat. 

“How does it work?” she asked. 

Dean stared at her not sure what she was asking. He started to choke when she kept tipping the water into his mouth after he’d stopped drinking. 

Finally she took the hint and pulled the glass away. Dean coughed, groaning when his body protested the spasm. The water he coughed from his mouth dripped down his chin and was cold where it mixed with the blood on his chest. 

Puriel tilted her head and seemed fixated by the trails of water droplets. She looked lower to the deepest wound sliced into his abdomen, which was still seeping blood. She reached out to trace the edge of the cut then pushed hard enough to swell fresh blood to the surface. 

Dean clenched his jaw and rode out the pain before glaring at her. “You gonna poke me to death?”

“You’re supposed to be the perfect design, but you fall apart so easily. Why did God make you so weak?”

Dean turned his head away. He knew for a fact that God was a sadistic son of a bitch, but that didn’t explain why he was weak. If he had an answer for that, he wouldn’t be hanging here. 

He shivered as her finger traced along the blood trail. Dean tried his damnedest to ignore her until she slipped her fingers into the curls at his groin. He startled, jerking away, not that it got him anywhere.

“This area is sensitive?” She ignored his efforts to pull away and twirled her finger around the hairs until it tugged at the tender skin beneath. “Why did God put hair here?”

Dean stopped struggling and rolled his eyes. He wasn’t about to give anatomy lessons to a grabby angel. Right now he just wanted Kushiel to get back in here to continue using him as a punching bag. He ignored Puriel as long as he could before twisting his hips away again. 

“Quit sampling the merchandise,” Dean said. “You’re gonna have to at least buy me a drink first.”

“I already brought you a drink.”

Dean couldn’t decide whether or not she was serious, but if it was a joke, it didn’t show on her face. She at least pulled her hand away, but only for a moment before she grasped his cock. 

Dean jumped, grunting when he pulled his shoulder too far. She only tightened her grip. He forced himself to stand still. 

Dean couldn’t count the number of hand jobs he’d received. Some were better than others, but that wasn’t what she was doing. He’d had doctor exams that were more of a turn on than the way she was holding his dick in her hands, poking at it like she was examining some new species of insect. 

She felt further between his legs. Dean choked down a moan as she cupped his balls in her hand and stroked him with her thumb. He cursed beneath his breath at the dull heat in his groin. 

Her hand returned to his half-hard dick. “You enjoy this.”

Dean wasn’t sure if it was a statement or a question. Even if it was a question, he wasn’t sure what the answer would be. 

Most nights, he’d go out of his way to get a girl like her to feel him up. At the least, it shouldn’t bother him, but her touch made his blood run cold. 

The tug of the restraints pulled up too many memories of too many other hands. He shoved down the flashes of inescapable claws and searing pain tearing him open. 

“I’ve had better,” Dean said.

From how enthralled she was with only touching him, he knew she hadn’t. Chances were that she was riding some poor virgin who really had never seen a dick before. 

“If you think this is fun, you should see what I can do with my hands,” Dean said with a tug at the restraints. 

“I’m familiar with hands, but my vessel doesn’t have these parts.”

She didn’t even bother to look up. Her fingers slid down his shaft as she leaned down to look closer. 

“Seriously, enough with the—”

Dean arched in the restraints as she scraped her nail over his slit. The dull panic grew stronger at another flood of memories and the arousal he was failing to stop. 

“It’s responsive,” she said. “How do you make it do that?”

Dean glanced at the camera before turning his head away as far as he could. It was bad enough when Cas walked in on his porn. The last thing Dean wanted to think about right now was Cas and his brother watching him play the part of an amateur porn star. He didn’t want them to see what he was. 

Dean's eyes squeezed closed as Puriel leaned in to kiss him. His parted lips remained frozen beneath hers.


	5. Chapter 5

Sam stared down at the text in the book before him without seeing the words or even the pages. There wasn’t really anything he could do until Kevin finished deciphering what they needed from the tablet, but at least with a book in front of him, he could pretend he was doing something. 

He’d far prefer to look at anything other than what the angel on the screen was doing to his brother. Her hand was below the frame, but Dean’s flushed cheeks and the confusion in his eyes spelled out what she was doing loud and clear. 

At least it did for most of them. Cas had arrived half an hour ago. Seeing him had been a relief, but having him here was only making the waiting harder.

“What is she doing to him?” Castiel asked. 

Sam tensed his already clutched fist and didn’t look up from the book. He couldn’t bring himself to put it to words that Cas wouldn’t understand anyway. 

While the rest of them had been quiet, Charlie had been threatening the angels through the monitor. She’d been calling them names even Sam had never heard before. He was pretty sure at least a few of the curses were Klingon, but ignored her until her tone shifted from pissed to urgent. 

“Hey, keep your hands off him!”

Sam looked up to see Kushiel come up behind Dean. He boxed Dean’s ear as the girl’s lips pulled away. Kushiel looked over Dean’s shoulder and down his front side as he spoke to him. 

Sam was ready to start shouting with Charlie when Dean winced at the angel’s words. Dean tugged at the restraints, looking as if he wanted to curl into himself. 

The sound came on and Sam caught the last two words. Two words too many.

Demons’ whore.

It wasn’t the words, which by far weren’t the worst thing he’d ever heard his brother called. It was Dean’s haunted expression and the shamed look in his eyes that said they weren’t only words. 

“Yeah, right. I’m so sure,” Charlie said, still speaking to the screen. “Dean’s not the one feeling up people chained to the ceiling!” 

Sam turned away from the screen. He raked his fingers through his hair and tried to quell the sickness that churned in his stomach. 

He wanted them to be only words. He wanted to believe that Dean was simply too exhausted to keep up his guards, but he knew. He should have known all along, at least since he’d gotten back from Hell himself. 

Kevin’s eyes caught his. Sam held his gaze for a moment before turning his attention back to Castiel and Charlie. 

“I don’t believe they can hear you,” Cas said. 

Charlie scoffed. “They’re going to be doing a whole lot more than hearing me.” 

“Are you sure about those coordinates?” Sam asked. 

Charlie startled as if she’d forgotten Sam was there. Her gaze didn’t leave the screen. “As sure as Darth Vader is Luke’s father.” Charlie growled when Kushiel put his hands on Dean’s shoulders. “What is the deal? These angels are grabbier than hentai tentacle monsters.” 

The angel stood in front of Dean, gripping his shoulders tight enough that Dean grimaced. Dean leaned back as the angel leaned into him. 

“You’re not gonna kiss me, too, are you?” Dean asked. 

Sam shook his head at his brother. Dean’s voice was unsteady. He wasn’t even managing to hide the fear in his eyes, but the words didn’t change. They never did. 

“You corrupt everything you touch,” Kushiel said.

“I know.” Dean looked up with a defeat that paralyzed Sam. “No one’s coming for me. Just finish it already.”

There was no bravado to the words. Sam’s chest tightened as he searched his brother’s face for any sign that it was a trick. He didn’t find any. 

Sam’s mind went to the one time he hadn’t tried to get Dean back and the other when he’d failed to. Dean had to know that would never happen again. Nothing could make him leave his brother to die like this. 

The angel jerked towards Dean. From the framing of the shot, Sam couldn’t see the angel’s knee jam into Dean’s groin. But he could hear it in Dean’s pained grunt and see it in the tears that immediately sprung to his eyes.

Charlie yelled at the screen while Cas jumped from his chair and headed for the stairs. 

“Cas, wait!”

Sam jogged after him and grabbed his arm when he didn’t stop. Cas spun around on him, pulling his arm away. 

“I’ve waited long enough! They’re doing this to Dean because of me. I’m going. Now.”

“Look at him, Cas,” Sam said with a motion towards the screen. “Dean’s helpless in there. He’d be dead before we could get in the door. There are just too many of them.”

The angel stepped aside, leaving Dean in full view. The stark light of the camera reflected his wet cheeks. His arms trembled in the restraints. 

Sam’s own hand shook as he wiped it over his face. It was terrifying to see Dean’s carefully constructed mask shattered. That facade was intrinsic to the brother he knew or at least thought he knew. 

Seeing Dean broken now was only made worse by knowing that it was nothing compared to what Dean had already endured. He knew Hell had been different for Dean. They’d been in separate places with different torments. Most importantly, Sam had deserved it and Dean hadn’t. His brother had been there because of him. 

There was nothing Sam wouldn’t give to sweep in and get Dean out, but he couldn’t lose his brother, not now. The reality of the situation was that he was the only one here not in chains capable of fighting angels. Without Dean, he’d be hard-pressed to take down a few angels, let alone how many Dean was talking about.

“We’ll get him back,” Sam said, as much to himself as anyone else listening. “But we need the rest of the spell first. We know where Dean is and we still have twenty-eight hours left on the clock. They won’t kill him before then.”

There was no advantage to the angels killing Dean before the time ran to zero as long as they didn’t have Castiel, but Sam knew Kushiel would take any excuse. One slip and Dean was dead. If either Cas or Charlie were killed instead, there still wouldn’t be much of Dean left to bring back. 

On the screen, Kushiel raised his sword and set the blade against Dean’s shoulder where the branded hand print had been. “Do you know why Castiel was the one to raise you from Hell?” 

“’Cause he was the only one of you jokers strong enough?” Dean asked.

Kushiel sliced the sword into Dean’s shoulder. Dean’s chin trembled as he bit his lip, muffling his cry. 

“Castiel was the only one foolish enough to contaminate himself by touching something so filthy.” 

“That isn’t true,” Cas said. “It requires an immense amount of energy to raise a soul from Hell. Dean is correct. Kushiel had been away from Heaven too long. He wasn’t strong enough.” 

Sam didn’t find the words comforting. The only thing worse than an angel bent on revenge was an angel with something to prove. 

“For millennia I’ve watched your kind wallow in the sulfur of the Pit, clawing and ripping at each other until all the light has gone to black,” Kushiel said. “Why does God favor you?” 

A humorless smirk ghosted over Dean’s lips. “Maybe because I actually have balls.” 

Kushiel slashed the sword down below the camera’s frame. A ragged scream tore from Dean’s throat nearly loud enough even through the speakers to mask Charlie’s sharp gasp. 

“This is not happening,” Charlie said. “This is seriously not happening. This is just some freaky genie thing. It’s not real. None of you are here. Dean’s definitely not there. Now I’m going to wake up...”

Charlie continued talking, but Sam didn’t hear her. His chest ached from the pounding of his heart and the breath he couldn’t let himself take. Nausea rose up in the back of his throat. If he’d been wrong and Dean died because of this, there wouldn’t be any angels left on earth when he was finished. 

Kushiel shouted again. “Answer the question!” 

“I don’t know!” Dean shouted back hoarsely. His words came out in pained gasps. “What can I say? God really blew it putting all his cards down on me.”

Sam finally let the air back into his lungs. Dean’s eyes were unfocused with pain, but he wouldn’t keep going on like this if the angel had cut anything other than his leg. 

Anxiety crept back up in Sam not from the ticking down of the clock, but from the defeat in his brother’s eyes. Dean wasn’t buying time. He was trying to hurry things along. 

It didn’t make sense. Dean always fought. Even completely out of it, Dean couldn’t seriously think that Sam would just leave him there. 

“I think I got it,” Kevin said. 

Sam spun around to meet Kevin as he jogged down the stairs. A couple of hours ago, Kevin had stormed upstairs with a bottle of painkillers and shut himself in his room with his headset blaring.

Now he looked ragged with hints of blood smeared beneath his nose, but he victoriously held several sheets of papers in his hand. They were all covered with symbols and scribbled notes that Sam doubted anyone but Kevin could ever decipher. 

“The instructions for making an angel bomb, they’re all here, but…” Kevin stopped at the bottom of the steps and grabbed the handrail to steady himself. He rubbed his forehead and shook it off. “But I still can’t figure out these last symbols.”

Kevin showed him the last two sheets, which were the only ones that weren’t filled with additional notes. The pictographs only made less sense to Sam, but he knew who they could ask. 

“We’ll take it to Crowley,” Sam said.

“Wait, Crowley?” Charlie asked. It was the first thing that had gotten her to turn away from the laptop. “Like the King of Hell Crowley?”

Kevin raised his brow to Charlie. “Doesn’t everyone have the King of Hell in their basement?” 

“Seriously? You got Crowley in your dungeon?”

“Crowley’s here?” Cas asked. 

Sam waved them all off. “We’ll talk about it later. Everyone just stay here while Kevin and I figure this out.”

Kevin passed the piece of paper to him and shook his head. “Sorry, Sam. I’ve seen enough tortures for one day. I don’t think it’s a good idea…”

“It’s okay, Kevin. Just get together the list of the other ingredients.”

Sam went down the stairs towards the basement with the papers in his hand. He didn’t have a plan for making Crowley talk even if the demon did know what these meant. Dean was far better at getting information than he was, but right now there wasn’t anything Sam wasn’t willing to do. 

He halted at the bottom of the steps when he heard someone. Sam stopped himself just short of knocking Charlie out. She stood directly behind him, holding her hands up in front of her face as if that could have deflected his fist. 

“Charlie, what’re you doing?”

“I’m not going to let you talk to the King of Hell alone. Even if he is just a crossroads demon.”

“How do you even know who Crowley is?”

“Hello, I totally read the books. You’re desperate and he feeds on that so…I’m coming.”

Charlie planted her feet and crossed her arms stubbornly over her chest. He didn’t have time to chase her off. Besides, she looked far too much like Dean for Sam to be able to argue with her right now. Instead, he steeled himself to negotiate with the king of negotiation before he heaved open the doors. 

“Visitors? Why I’m flattered.” Crowley leaned to look behind Sam to Charlie and smiled. “And just who is this fiery young lady?” 

Charlie stepped forward to stand at Sam’s side. “I helped take down the leviathans so I’m not someone you wanna mess with. Got it?”

“Ah, yes, you’re Dick’s little pet.”

“Dicks? Uh…no, not so much.” Charlie thought about it for a moment then grimaced. “Oh, you mean Dick Roman.” 

“I agree completely, my dear. Foul creature those leviathans.”

“Totally. Kind of like you.”

Crowley chuckled. The chains clanked as he rested back in his chair. He folded his hands as casually as if his wrists weren’t confined in cuffs. 

“I see my reputation precedes me,” Crowley said. “I must admit, you have me at a disadvantage.”

“Well, yeah. You are the one chained to a chair in a closet.”

Sam had no intention of letting Crowley drag this out. He did what Dean would have done and stepped forward to slam the papers on the desk in front of Crowley. 

“What do these symbols mean?” Sam asked. 

“Moose, charming as ever.” Crowley barely glanced down at the paper before looking back up. “And why exactly would I want to translate your prophet’s chicken scratch? I have to say, the service here isn’t exactly inspiring.”

“Can you read it or not?” 

“Depends…”

“We don’t have time for this, Crowley.”

“If you’re in such a rush, I trust you won’t have any difficulty finding the key,” Crowley said with a tilt of his head to expose the lock of the iron ring around his neck. 

“You know I’m not going to do that.”

Crowley shrugged, relaxing back into his chair. “I’m sorry we couldn’t make a deal.” He slid the paper back towards Sam as far as the restraints allowed. “Why don’t you just have Dean ask his boyfriend? Or did you trade your brother in for this improved model?”

Charlie slipped in front of Sam and shoved the paper back towards Crowley. “You listen up, Crowley. Dean’s being tortured by these crazy angels so you’re going to tell us what this means.” 

“Dean’s being tortured?” Crowley asked. “Well, in that case…color me jealous. I’ve been waiting years to have a go at that mouthy, self-righteous little bastard. Really, I’m hurt that I wasn’t invited.”

Sam jumped as Charlie slammed her fist down. When she leaned over the table, Crowley tipped further back in his chair. 

“Last week, I got fired. Today, my friend is being tortured and, to be totally honest, it’s not a really great time of the month. So you can either read this or I’m gonna try out one of those angel blades for myself. Those angels gave me some ideas and they all start below the belt.” 

Crowley glanced around Charlie to Sam as if he’d save him. Sam didn’t even have to pretend to go along with Charlie. From the intensity of her tone, even he thought she might be serious. He’d gladly give her his sword if Crowley balked. 

“I have to admit, you make a persuasive argument.” Crowley reached out to pull the paper back towards him. “It’s a list. Let’s see…dragon’s tooth, fulgurite, the spleen of a goat born with two heads and, my personal favorite, prophet’s blood. Delicious. Any other questions, or would you still like to play with my naughty bits?”

“Okay, eew,” Charlie groaned. “Come on, let’s go save Dean.”

“My, she’s motivational,” Crowley said as he watched Charlie leave. “You certainly have a type, don’t you? Although, that brother of yours is really more of a—”

Sam slammed the door closed and hurried to catch up with Charlie. She was already upstairs with Kevin, adding the items to his list. 

“How’s Dean doing?” Sam asked Cas. 

“I imagine he’s cold and hungry. No doubt desiring of sleep.”

Sam furrowed his brow as he looked at the screen. Dean was alone again. His head was dropped to his chest, and he slumped forward in the restraints. 

Sam couldn’t tell whether or not Dean was still conscious. Either way, the blood that dripped from his battered body bothered Sam far more than the last time Dean had eaten. 

When he looked back at Cas, he realized it wasn’t that Cas didn’t see the injuries. It was only that he was aware of the less extreme discomforts for the first time. 

“Do we have any two-headed goat spleens?” Kevin asked. 

“Yeah, we don’t have a lot, but there was a bottle in that supply closet Dean found. There’s also a jar of dragon teeth.” 

Sam grabbed his latest inventory book off the shelf to check the box numbers. After this, he doubted Dean would do anymore complaining about that storage room, but right now he’d love to hear nothing more than Dean at his side bitching about it.

By the time he made it back to the others, Charlie was setting a couple of syringes of blood into a box already packed with a mortar and pestle. She took the last jars from Sam and pulled the box into her arms before heading towards the stairs. 

“Kevin gave me the skinny on the magic so follow me, bitches.”

Instinct told Sam to leave Charlie here with Kevin. He really shouldn’t even bring Cas, but he was going to need something resembling backup. 

“Alright, let’s go.” Sam stopped at the foot of the stairs and looked back at Kevin. “If anything changes…”

“I’ll call.”

Sam made it part way up the stairs before a wave of dizziness struck him. He grabbed the railing and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, Charlie and Cas were both staring down at him. 

“Sam? You okay?” Charlie asked. 

“Fine.”

“Uh, is that like Dean ‘fine’? Because you really don’t look so good.”

“It’s nothing. I just…” 

Sam took another tentative step and his legs gave way. He grabbed for the railing again, but it was further away than he’d thought. He fell back, rolling down the steps to land at the base of the staircase. 

“Sam!”

He tried to sit, but his limbs were in a tangle and weren’t responding. Everyone hovered over him before he even got his legs straightened out. He wasn’t sure which one of them propped him up against the wall. 

“Your nose is bleeding,” Cas said. 

Sam raised his heavy hand to sloppily swipe over his lip. His fingers came back crimson. “Damn it. Not now.” 

“Not now what?” Charlie crouched down in front of him. “Sam, what’s going on?”

“The Trials,” Kevin said. “They-”

“No,” Sam cut him off. “That’s done. I’m better.”

Kevin stepped closer. “Dean sure doesn’t think so.”

Part of Sam had thought that he’d been imagining Dean’s hovering, but apparently he hadn’t. There was no reason Dean should think the trials were still a problem. Sure, Sam was exhausted, but otherwise he was fine.

“What trials?” Charlie asked. 

“Sam did these trials to close the gates of Hell. They really messed him up. I mean, he seemed better, but I guess…”

Charlie squeezed Sam’s shoulder. “We’ll get your brother back.”

“What? No way. You’re not going without me.” Sam tried to stand and the world spun around again until acid crept up in his throat. “You can’t fight the angels.”

“You can’t either. Seriously, it’s not gonna take the Hulk to throw this bomb. This is magic. Magic I can do. I may not be a pro hunter, but I’ve done enough Moondoor battles to know that you don’t bring a wounded soldier to a hostage exchange. Unless you want to lose and listen to annoying people gloat for like two months.”

“Sam, she’s right…mostly,” Cas said. “In this condition, you’re as much a risk to Dean as to yourself.”

Sam couldn’t think of much more terrifying than sending human Cas and Charlie alone anywhere, let alone into a battle against an unknown number of angels. He didn’t want to admit that they were right, but his head felt as if it might literally explode. 

Cas was the one who knew these angels, and if it came down to hand to hand combat, they’d lose with or without him. It went against everything he knew, but something in his gut told him to let them go. 

“Seriously, we got this,” Charlie said. “We’re not coming back without him.”

Sam grasped Charlie’s hand before she stood. “Just make sure you do come back.”

“You got it, captain.” Charlie saluted then nodded to Cas. “Come on, let's fire up the Millennium Falcon and rescue Han, but just so we’re clear I am so not gonna be the one wearing the golden bikini.”

Cas frowned. “I don’t wish to wear a golden bikini either.”

Sam’s head clunked back against the wall. Charlie tried to continue Dean’s teachings on the world of pop culture as she and Cas headed up the steps. 

His mind screamed to get up and go after them. It wasn’t even commonsense or logistics as much as the simple need to prove Dean wrong. Sam needed to be the one to break in that door and pull Dean out. Instead, all he could do was watch and wonder how Dean had known he wasn’t coming.


	6. Chapter 6

The floor beneath Dean’s feet was sticky with blood. He shivered hard enough that it shook the chains. The sound echoed through the room, which was deafening in its silence. 

Dean struggled to stand straight enough to take the strain off his shoulders. His body wanted to collapse. He wanted it to be over. 

The light from the window was gone, and Dean doubted this place had seen electricity since before he’d been born. The only light that remained had been set up for the camera and ran off a battery pack that would outlive him. It was about time something did. 

The angels were finally starting to get it. No one was coming. Zeke must have listened because Sam would have been here hours ago, army or no army. 

Dean had been relieved, but with every passing hour it became harder to breathe and even harder to focus. There was nothing to do between blows aside from cycle through how many ways this could go wrong. 

He was trusting an angel he knew next to nothing about with his brother. He was trusting that Cas could manage on his own and that Kevin could somehow find the answers to put it all back together. It was a load of crap, but regardless of how much he felt like he needed to be there, he knew they wouldn’t actually be any worse off without him. 

Kushiel stood in the doorway gripping the sword. Dean watched his blood drip from the tip and strained his ears to hear what Puriel was saying in the next room. 

She’d been texting with his cell phone, but it was gone from her hand by the time she walked back towards Kushiel. Her formerly white dress was smeared with red. 

“Well?” Kushiel asked. 

“Nothing. Hutriel’s still alone. No one has come.” 

Dean released a painful sigh of relief. He wasn’t sure how long ago the third angel had left, but he knew the bastard had gone to pick up Cas. 

There wasn’t a more ridiculous time to be praying. Yet he still found his muddled mind begging anything that would hear him to not let Cas show up at the pickup point. 

Puriel pushed into the doorway beside Kushiel. She picked at a splinter of the rough wood as she looked up at the angel beside her. 

“I told you not to break it so much.” 

She slipped in past him to walk towards Dean. Her bare feet left bloody footprints behind them as she circled him. As she walked, she traced her nail along Dean’s straining arms. 

When she stopped, it was to stare into his eyes. She stood on her tiptoes, using Dean’s shoulders to steady herself. His vision faded out and he sucked in a sharp breath down his raw throat. Everything tasted like blood. 

The intensity of her stare was more painful than the weight on his shoulder, which he couldn’t really feel anymore. Her nose brushed against his and he closed his eyes. 

“It’s all broke. Even if we stitched it back up, there’s nothing left for anyone to want. Not in here.” Her hand moved to rest over Dean’s heart where his tattoo was outlined in cuts and caked blood. “Or here…”

Puriel stopped leaning on him. She set her hand against his temple before brushing her fingers back into his matted hair and pulling his head down towards her. 

Dean remained still as she placed another soft kiss on his lips. It didn’t matter anymore. He might as well enjoy it. It’d probably be the last time any girl who wasn’t a black-eyed bitch kissed him. 

Dean cracked his eyes open as Kushiel stormed back into the room. “Why is it that you keep doing that?” the angel demanded.

“I don’t know,” Puriel said. “But I like it.”

Her hand played in Dean’s hair. He blinked away the moisture in his eyes without knowing why it was there. 

“You’ve played with it enough.” Kushiel snatched her wrist, yanking her hand away. “It’s obscene and disgusting. It’s only festering flesh and bones clinging to a charred soul.”

“You don’t look so hot yourself,” Dean croaked. 

Kushiel stalked towards him to press the tip of the sword against his chest. “She may enjoy your extremities, but when the time is up, regardless of whether or not anyone stoops low enough to claim you, I will take great pleasure in slitting you open and pulling out your insides.” 

“Why wait?” Dean asked. “We’re already having so much fun.”

“Precisely. As you might say, the fun is only just beginning.”

“Maybe, but I wouldn’t say it like a total douche—” 

Dean’s words shattered and his chest burned as if it were being torn open when the sword sliced over his battered skin. He didn’t have to look down to know what he looked like with his innards hanging out. In his mind, he could hear the bellowing of hellhounds fighting for scraps. 

Only they weren’t. The sword had only broken skin and someone else was shouting. 

For the first time in hours, panic-soaked adrenaline coursed through him as Dean looked up. Cas was standing in the doorway. 

“Cas, no!” Dean shouted as best he could. “Get the hell out of here!”

Cas only briefly met his eyes. He stared at him with pity and regret, neither of which Dean wanted to see. He still couldn’t look away as Cas turned his attention to the angels. 

“It’s me you want,” Cas said. 

Puriel stepped back while Kushiel surged forward with his weapon raised. “How are you even here?” he demanded. “You’re supposed to be only human.” 

“They’re not as incompetent as we were led to believe.” Cas circled around with his own sword drawn. “What you’re doing here is wrong.”

“And how could you possibly know?” Kushiel asked. “You fell long before losing your grace. You let that wretched thing destroy you.”

Dean felt the full weight of the accusation as Kushiel gestured towards him with the sword. Cas could deny it all he wanted, but they all knew it was true. He was the one who had led Cas down this road. 

“It was we who tried to destroy this world and I who brought down Heaven,” Cas said. “If not for Dean and Sam, nothing would remain of this world.”

“This world means nothing! Armies have fallen. Our brothers and sisters were slaughtered all to raise that filthy thing.”

“He never should have been there.”

“You forget, Castiel, I was the one charged with the observation of Hell. I saw everything. If you’d seen the things this soul had done, you wouldn’t be so quick to defend it. You wouldn’t have betrayed us all.”

“I’m only asking you once to stand down, and for you," Cas said with a nod towards Puriel, "to remove your hands from him.” 

Dean hadn’t noticed that she’d tucked herself back beside him. Her arm snaked around and cupped his bruised ass. Dean flushed and dropped his gaze to the blood-splattered floor. It wasn’t the worst thing she might decide to grab. 

“Cas, just go,” Dean whispered. 

“He said, get your hands off him!”

Dean couldn’t place the new voice before something clunked against the floor. Puriel stumbled away then a flash of flames singed the air and screams filled his ears. 

“And don’t you come back! There’s more where that came from.”

“I highly doubt it’s possible for them to return, but the others will be near.” A hand grasped Dean’s wrist, shifting the restraint that cut into his skin. “We need to get him down.”

“Oh, God…” 

Dean heard the sharp gasp, but hadn’t bothered to raise his eyes to see what had shocked Charlie. It didn’t matter because she wasn’t there. 

“Charlie.” This time Cas’s voice was firm, carrying the weight of Heaven’s command. “We have to find the keys.”

“Right. Keys. On it.”

Dean finally lifted his eyes and caught a flash of Charlie’s red hair disappearing into the next room. Dean scanned the area. Nothing had changed. 

The camera still pointed at him, and the bloody hanger still lay on the floor by his feet. There were no bodies. The two angels had just disappeared. 

This wasn’t real. If it were, Charlie wouldn’t be here. Cas wouldn’t either. Even if for some crazy ass reason Zeke had decided to come for him, he wouldn’t have brought Cas. 

“Where are the other angels?” Cas asked.

“Told you already,” Dean said. “Don’t know where Cas is and even if I did…”

“Dean, I’m right here.”

Dean chuckled weakly and spit the bitter taste of blood from his mouth. “Nice try, Cushy, but this ain’t my first rodeo.”

“How’s he doing?” 

It was Charlie again. A set of keys jingled in her hand. Dean watched with disinterest as she crouched down to unlock the manacles around his ankles. Even as the weight of the iron fell away, Dean didn’t bother to try to move his aching feet. He knew the chains were still there. 

“He appears to be hallucinating,” Cas said.

“You’re the hallucination and I ain’t buying it, pal. You can take your rescue and shove it.”

Cas wrapped his arm around Dean’s waist. Dean jerked against the remaining restraints, becoming less certain about which of them were which angel. He’d thought Charlie was Puriel, but this supposed Cas was being damn grabby. 

Charlie stood and reached for his wrist. “He’s probably in shock. That’s a thing, right? A really not good thing. Just hang in there, Dean.”

She unlocked the restraint and began to lower his arm. Pain coursed through his body, overwhelming everything else. He heard voices out of reach and felt himself being moved. He was falling. 

“Dean?”

A hand gingerly set on his good shoulder. Dean opened his eyes and found himself staring at wood boards. Floorboards. Not the roof of a coffin. He was on his knees, folded in on himself. 

A spasm jolted through his shoulder. Dean clutched his arm to his chest and steadied his breathing before he straightened up. 

When Dean focused back on the room, Charlie was crouched in front of him watching him anxiously while Cas kneeled at his side. The pain was real and so was the hand on his shoulder not far below where Cas’s hand had first touched him. 

“Cas?”

“Dean, I’m sorry.”

“Shut it.” Dean blinked his eyes, still struggling to focus his vision. They might be blurry, but Cas and Charlie were still beside him. “If you two are really here then I really need my pants.”

“I’ve seen this all before,” Cas said. “Charlie has also informed me that she doesn’t find it of interest.” 

“Well, yeah, but I said it nicer than that. Anyway, I am glad everything’s still there.”

“Uh, okay… Awkward. So if we’re all done appreciating my junk, I’ll take those pants now.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Charlie looked horrified as she stared at his crotch. It wasn’t exactly the reaction he usually got from the ladies. “That’s a bad cut…like really bad.” 

That wasn’t news to him. The damn thing radiated pain through his entire leg and had started bleeding enough again to make his calf sticky and hot where his thigh rested over it. 

Charlie looked up at his chest. “I don’t think we even have enough bandages and what’s with you guys and breaking arms?”

He didn’t think anything was broken aside from maybe a rib or two, but the damn arm wasn’t exactly working either. The tingling ran up into his neck and down through his fingers. Even his blurry vision could see that the joint was out of shape.

“Must’ve dislocated it again.”

“So it just popped out, right?” Charlie asked. “I think I can fix that. I saw this video on YouTube…”

Dean raised his brow as high as he could with the swelling in his face. “Thanks, but I think I’ll wait for Sam to get his ass in here.” Cas steadied him as Dean tried to turn towards the doorway. “What’s taking him so damn long, anyway?”

“Dean, your brother isn’t here,” Cas said. 

“Well, where the hell is he?”

“He’s back at the Batcave waiting for you,” Charlie said. “So come on, let’s roast the rest of these flying monkeys so we can get out of here.”

There was no way that Sam in his right mind with both his legs attached would have let these two come here alone. Dean let it drop only because he had a pretty good idea about what had happened. He just wasn’t sure whether he should thank or kill Zeke for it. 

“The other guy, Jabba the Hutt or whatever the hell, he’s gone,” Dean said. “Son of a bitch took my car.”

Charlie’s face scrunched. “Uh, so… Jabba the Hutt took the angel army with him in your car?” 

Dean sighed and let himself lean into Cas to avoid face planting. “Not Jabba. Huttie or some crap.”

“Hutriel?” Cas asked.

“Yeah, whatever. Creepy ass silent bastard.”

“Yes, that’s him. He was an enforcer in their garrison. Something happened during the siege. He hasn’t spoken since.”

“The siege to rescue me?” Dean’s chin dropped to his chest. When he continued, his voice wasn’t as steady as he would’ve liked. “Guess I can’t really blame the guy for wanting to crush my skull in.” 

“Dean…”

“I said shut it, Cas. Let’s just get out of here.”

“What about the rest of the angels?” Charlie asked. 

“There were only three so you can stow the mojo, Hermione.”

“Three? You so haven’t played enough Halo if you think three’s an army. Sam said there’d be like a whole battalion of Storm Troopers.”

“Guess he was wrong,” Dean said. 

He tried to push up off the floor, sending both Cas and Charlie scrambling to grab a hold of him when he collapsed. He choked on the rush of pain as they pulled him back up.

“Was just getting warmed up,” Dean said. 

He barely understood his own words and didn’t argue when they moved to stand on either side of him. Cas tightened his grip around Dean’s back as they pulled him up far enough for his feet to take over. 

“We’re hurting you,” Cas said.

Dean blinked his eyes at the stinging droplets of blood-laced sweat dripping from his brow. He wasn’t sure if he’d done something to trigger the comment, but nothing had ever stopped Cas from stating the obvious. Two could play at that game.

“No, my back hurts. Not your fault.”

“It’s not yours either, Dean.”

Dean didn’t believe that. He wasn’t sure he even believed they were really walking out of here, but some part of him believed in Cas enough to stop clinging to consciousness and let go.

***

Dean jerked awake. A wall of pain hit in the next instant before he could even wonder where he was. He moaned as he shifted, pressing his face down into the pillow as he rode out the wave of agony. He couldn’t tell what hurt. Everything did. 

He jumped again a moment later when he realized he wasn’t in a bed. It was the backseat of a car and it wasn’t his. If there was anything Dean knew, it was the Impala’s back bench. 

The location became the least of his concerns when he felt the pillow beneath him move. His face was resting in someone’s lap. Dean flipped onto his back, instantly regretting the movement, but still clutching his fist ready to fight. He startled all the more when he saw Cas’s worried eyes staring back down at him. 

“Cas? What the…” Dean’s effort to sit spiked pain through his arm and every other nerve in his body. “Son of a bitch!” 

Distantly, he heard someone telling him to slow down. He turned his head towards the voice, too fast. If not for the hands supporting him, he would have ended up back flat on the seat. 

A smile cracked over his split lips when he saw that it was his brother leaning in the open car door. Not Zeke, but Sam. Dean tensed again when Sam reached out to him and Cas wrapped his arm around his torso. 

Dean twisted half-heartedly against their gentle hold. “Why’s everyone feeling me up?”

He grunted as they helped him to sit. The position pulled at the wounds on his backside, reigniting the fire. His left arm hung at his side and he yelped at the shot of pain in his shoulder when it was jostled. 

Sam stood hunched over half in the car and half out while Cas remained sitting behind him, steadying him. They both stared at him like they thought he’d shatter in their hands. That wasn’t happening. 

“I’m fine,” Dean huffed.

Neither of them looked convinced, but they at least helped him to sit the rest of the way up. The jacket that must have been laid over him fell down onto the seat. He shivered when the cool air of the night hit him. 

He couldn’t figure out why it was so damn cold until he looked down at himself. He was only wearing his boxers and enough bloody makeshift bandages that he looked like the Mummy. The only actual clothes he wore were his boots, and even those were only slipped on. 

At least he wasn’t in his car because the blood was never coming out of this beige upholstery. Dean’s attention shot back to Sam. 

“Did you get my baby back from those winged bastards?”

“Yeah, the car’s fine. Kevin got it.” Sam’s grip subtly tightened around Dean’s bicep. “Dean, I’m so sorry.”

“You damn well better be. You sent Kevin to get my car? What the hell were you thinking?”

“Dean, I’m serious. I don’t know what happened. I was fine then-”

“I know.” The guilt on Sam’s face was only making his own worse. “Wasn’t your fault, okay?” Dean forced himself to meet his brother’s eyes again. “I mean it, Sammy. Now can we get inside? I’m freezing my ass off here.”

“You sure you can walk?”

“Of course I can walk.” Dean squirmed when he realized he was practically sitting in Cas’s lap again with the angel’s arm wrapped around him. “Dude, seriously, hands off.”

Cas looked confused. “You’re leaning on me. I thought you wanted support.” 

“Well, I don’t need a damn hug.”

Dean slid from Castiel’s arms and shoved Sam weakly in the chest so he had room to stand. He swung his feet out, ignoring the fact that he couldn’t actually tell how far off the ground he was. 

He took a step and his knees buckled. His arm flew out to try to grab something. By the time he could see straight again, Cas was on one side of him and Sam was on the other. Charlie stood in front looking ready to jump in.

Dean released the grip he had on Castiel’s shirt and steadied his breath. He clenched his fist again when he realized he was shaking. 

“I can grab his feet,” Charlie said. 

“Not happening. I can walk.” Dean took another tentative step forward and collapsed back into Cas. “Just need everything to stop spinning. Just need…”

“It’s okay, Dean,” Sam said. “Let’s get you inside.”

Sam was using that annoyingly calm tone that could convince people in a burning theater that it was okay to just keep watching the movie. It only didn’t piss Dean off because he could hear the fear it hid. 

He didn’t want Sam to worry about him. He didn’t want anyone to, yet they were all hovering around staring at him. He was trying his damnedest to be okay, but he was tired and not the kind of tired a nap was going to fix. 

This wasn’t just going to go away because they weren’t just seeing him now. They’d seen the whole damn show. They knew. 

“Dean?” 

Dean looked up, glancing around to see who had spoken. “What?”

“You okay?” Sam asked.

“Super.”

Charlie jogged ahead to open the door as Sam wrapped Dean’s bandaged arm over his shoulder and Castiel braced him. Dean couldn’t find further words to protest. He could only do his best not to drag his feet even though his boots felt too heavy to lift. 

He raised his head when they stopped inside at the top of the stairs. Dean looked down over the hall. Part of him kept waiting for it to dissolve into somewhere else, just one more delusion snatched away. 

He blinked and nothing changed. The walls didn’t melt away. Sam and Cas still stood at his side. All that other crap was gone. This was real.

“Home sweet home,” Dean said. 

“They really did knock you on your head.”

Dean saw Kevin standing at the bottom of the steps and smiled wide enough that his jaw ached. “Hey, Kev.”

“Still got all your fingers?”

Dean smirked and raised the hand he could still move, spreading his fingers as proof. He checked to make sure they really were all there then gave Kevin a thumbs up. 

“Good. You’ll need them for this.” The keys to the Impala dangled from Kevin’s fingers. “Not a scratch.”

“Not sure whether to hug you or punch you, kid, but thanks for saving her.”

Dean lost focus part way down the stairs. Somehow, he still ended up standing upright at the bottom. He couldn’t figure out what they were waiting for until he realized he was the one trying to catch his breath. 

“I got it,” Dean said. 

He was halfway to untangling himself from his brother when his gaze caught the laptop sitting on the table. The frame was empty, but he recognized the room where he’d expected to die yet again. There were numbers in the corner of the screen still counting down. 

Dean shuffled towards the table, brushing off Sam’s grip when he tried to steer him away. He only barely registered the fact that Cas was still holding him up because Cas was far more cooperative about going where he wanted than his brother was. 

He released a ragged sigh when he looked over the note and the stack of photos. Dean poked through them. He picked up one of the close-ups and grimaced as he looked into his own eyes. He hadn’t been hiding it as well as he thought. 

“I told her it was a crappy angle.” Dean tossed the photo back onto the table. He looked in Sam’s direction without meeting his brother’s eyes. “How about popping this shoulder back in so I can take a shower?” 

“You’re not taking a shower alone,” Sam said.

Dean quirked his brow. “I’m sure not taking one with anyone here. That’s unless you got some homecoming strippers hiding in the next room or Charlie’s had a change of heart.”

Charlie smiled. “Sorry, Dean. You’re cute and all, but a leopard can’t change her spots.”

Dean nodded to himself. He knew all too well that was true. He forced a tired grin when he looked back at Sam. 

“You hear that? She thinks I’m cute.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Yeah, Dean, you’re frickin' adorable. You’re also barely conscious.”

“I’ve had worse.”

Dean ignored his brother’s glare and steered Cas towards the whiskey decanter. He nodded for Cas to open the lid then poured a full glass with his working hand. 

The whiskey scorched his raw throat, but he guzzled it as quickly as if it were water before pouring a second glass. He’d started in on that one, too, before he turned around. 

“You shouldn’t have suffered in that way,” Cas said. “You know you didn’t deserve this?”

Dean swallowed down the ache in his throat. “Yeah, sure.” He looked as far from Cas as he could with the former angel clinging to him. “Shoulder. Shower. Come on, people. Let’s get some service around here.”

Sam sighed and nodded to Cas. “Can you hold him?”

“Of course.”

Sam took the glass from Dean’s hand and set it aside. Dean sucked in a sharp breath, bracing himself when Sam returned to grasp his arm.

He wanted to do this minus the spectators. He didn’t really want to do it at all, but didn’t have time to think about it before a white hot streak of pain shot through his shoulder socket. 

He would’ve been on the ground if Cas hadn’t been clutching him. Dean leaned into Cas, panting as he waited for the worst of it to pass. 

“I’ve got him,” Cas said.

Dean didn’t even argue against the support until he realized that Cas was steering him towards the shower room. 

“Dude, you’re not giving me a sponge bath,” Dean said. “I’ve had all the fun with angels I can take for one day. Not that you’re… Sorry.”

Dean wasn’t even entirely sure what he was saying. He only knew that he should shut up and that he wasn’t getting into a shower with Cas. Not today. 

He startled when Charlie popped up beside him. “Move aside boys,” she said. “This is clearly a job for a woman.”

“Charlie…”

“Don’t you even start with me. So far today I’ve told off the King of Hell and zapped two angels to oblivion. You do not want to mess with me, buddy. Besides, I’ve already seen it all and I’m still not into you. Or…well, you know.”

Dean was too damn tired to keep arguing, and as much as he hated to admit it, Sam was right. Even he didn’t think he could honestly stand long enough to wash all this blood off. 

Dean kept quiet as they walked down the hall. Each step pulled at the gash in his thigh. It took all his concentration to put one foot in front of the other. He tried not to lean too heavily on Charlie and tried to block out the soft voices of the others talking behind his back. 

He didn’t look up until Charlie had him plopped down on a bench. Dean’s vision was hazy as he watched her start to unwind the bandages. 

“You know, I don’t actually need a babysitter,” Dean said. 

“Good thing, too, because I don’t babysit for free…or ever. Well, there was this one time, but…let’s not go there.”

Charlie paled as she made it to the last layer of the bandage around his forearm where the lower gauze stuck to the ragged wound. 

Dean grasped her hand. “Charlie, seriously, I got this. All you have to do is call Sam if I pass out, okay?”

Charlie slapped his hand away. “I can handle this. Who do you think put these on in the first place, huh? We have a med tent at Moondoor. I don’t mind blood. It’s just that it’s…on you and this is just really…real.” 

She winced as she began to peel up the gauze. “I mean I’ve seen guys limp into the med tent crying because someone hit them with a foam sword and you… How’d they even do this?”

“It was my fault.” Dean tugged his forearm away when he saw Charlie’s eyes glistening. “Hey, it’s okay, kiddo.”

“No, it’s not. I saw what they did. That’s so not okay.”

Dean kept his eyes focused on the tiles. “But there wasn’t really any sound, right? You didn’t really hear anything.”

“You mean about what they did to you in Hell?” 

Dean bit his lip, ignoring the taste of blood. When he spoke, it was a quiet rasp. “They said the sound was off.”

Charlie squeezed his hand before going back to the bandages. “Come on, I did read the books. I already knew you and Sam got like frequent flier miles for the dead and you even know Death, which is really creepy and yet kind of cool.” 

Charlie stopped unwinding the bandage from his chest and waited until his eyes met hers. “I also know what you think you did down there, and I know it is so much crap.”

“Bull. I know Chuck didn’t write it into the books. I doubt he even saw it. He wouldn’t have stood in the same room with me if he had. Neither would you.”

“You’re right,” Charlie said. “That is bull. Everybody knows, Dean, and nobody cares because we all know you did what you had to, and Castiel? You didn’t corrupt him. You freed him. You know, like when they freed Piccard from the Borg.”

“Piccard didn’t try to destroy the world. It didn’t destroy him.”

“Yeah, because obviously everything’s your fault.”

“At least we agree on something.”

Charlie glared at him as she finished unwinding the bandage from his thigh. “Dude, I’d totally slap you if you weren’t half dead already and I wasn’t still pissed off at the guy who did slap you.”

“Guess it’s my lucky day.”

Dean leaned his good shoulder into the wall to prop himself up as he watched Charlie adjust the shower’s temperature. He shouldn’t be here and didn’t deserve anyone who was here, but for the first time in longer than he could remember, he didn’t feel like he had to carry himself.


	7. Chapter 7

Sam sat on the edge of Dean’s bed, and it really was Dean’s bed. He glanced over the guns carefully mounted on the wall and the photo of Dean and Mom beneath the lamp. He couldn’t claim to understand it, but he knew this place was home for Dean and, for whatever reason, that was important to his brother. Dean was even starting to treat the place like his car. 

Dean never would have thought twice about lying bloody over motel sheets, but he’d refused to lie down on his own bed until Charlie had laid a couple towels down. Sam had bandaged the worst of the wounds on Dean’s back, but there was a mass of small cuts over the bruised skin that kept reopening depending on how he moved. 

Sam could tell by the way Dean shifted that it hurt just to lie on his back. With the blankets pulled down and Dean wearing only a towel wrapped around his waist, there was no way for him hide the tensing of his muscles. 

There just wasn’t any better way for him to lay with Sam still working on stitching him back together. He wished Dean would pass out again, but his brother was stubbornly clinging to consciousness. 

Sam had put butterfly sutures at the nape of Dean’s neck and bandages at the side. Dean tugged at the gauze wrapped around his throat as if he were trying to loosen it. Sam couldn’t tell if Dean was aware enough to know he was doing it. 

“Dean, leave it alone.”

“It’s too tight.”

“No, it’s not.”

Sam had already checked it twice. It couldn’t be any looser and still hold the bandages in place, and there was no way it was interfering with Dean’s breathing. Sam grasped Dean’s wrist and guided his brother’s arm back down to the bed. 

Dean gripped the sheets in his hand instead. Sam wasn’t sure if it was the pain or something else entirely. There was no hint in Dean’s neutral expression as he stared up at the ceiling while Sam returned to stitching yet another frighteningly deep gash.

With each wound, each stitch, Sam grew angrier. He was nearly as enraged by the fact that he hadn’t been able to stop this as he was by what the angels had done and what the demons had done before that. 

It was terrifying seeing Dean so pale with wounds that would take far too long to heal. They no longer had an angel who could just wave a hand and take the outer scars away. 

Dean should be in a hospital. There was no question about that, but Dean had already vehemently shot down that idea and Sam knew he was right. 

Dean may have lied about an army of angels being in that house with him, but there really was an army of angels out there gunning for them. This was the only place they could even pretend to be safe and, right now, Dean needed that more than anything. 

Dean’s breath hitched as Sam gave one last tug of the thread before tying off the stitches on the wound that cut over Dean’s ribs. It was the last gash on his torso, but there was still one more hidden beneath the towel. 

“Grab me a t-shirt,” Dean said.

Sam grimaced at the thought of trying to get Dean into a shirt. Dean's shoulder was going to be screwed for weeks, and the last thing he needed to be doing was pulling at the freshly stitched wounds. 

“You don’t want to put on a shirt right now.”

“Says the guy wearing three layers,” Dean grumbled. “I’m freezing here.”

Sam knew that wasn’t it. He did believe Dean was cold. They didn’t even know how to adjust the thermostat in here. It was comfortable for the way they usually dressed, not for laying around in a towel. He’d offered to help Dean put his robe on, but Dean had been too worried about getting blood on that, too. 

“You can cover up in a minute,” Sam said.

“And you can bite me. Bossy bitch.”

Sam shook his head, but couldn’t pretend he wasn’t glad to hear Dean being a smart ass even if it was only an act. He reached out to steady Dean as he started to sit up and lean towards the edge of the bed. 

“Dean, what’re you doing?” 

“Getting a damn drink. That okay with you, Dr. Sexy?”

He helped Dean to sit up just enough that he wouldn’t choke. Sam had put a glass of water on the table near the bed to try to get Dean hydrated, but Dean’s unsteady hand reached towards the whiskey bottle beside it. 

Dean couldn’t stretch well enough to reach the table himself, but Sam still handed him the whiskey only because he still needed to stitch up Dean’s leg. 

Dean gulped from the bottle before resting it in his lap. He winced when his bandaged arm bumped against his leg. 

Sam sighed in frustration. “If ever we needed an angel to heal-”

“…for Sam,” Dean said.

Dean had been saying something else, but Sam hadn’t caught the rest. When he looked at Dean, his brother startled.

“What?” Sam asked.

“Huh?” 

“What about me?”

“What about you?” Dean asked. “I’m the one the angels hacked to bits. It’s not all about you, Marsha.”

Dean looked guilty as hell, but that wasn’t exactly new. Sam reached towards Dean’s lap to take the whiskey bottle. It wasn’t there. He glanced around to see it sitting back on the table Dean couldn’t reach.

“You okay, Sammy?”

“Uh, yeah. Just been a long day, I guess.”

With Sam’s help, Dean sagged back down onto the foam mattress only he thought was comfortable. His momentarily relaxed body stiffened when Sam folded back the towel from his thigh. Dean’s hand shot out to grab his wrist with far more strength than Sam would’ve thought Dean capable of. 

“Sam?”

Dean was staring into his eyes as if he was trying to figure out who he was. He must be far more out of it than Sam had thought. 

“Yeah, Dean. I’m right here.”

It was a moment longer before Dean eased down. He returned his gaze to the ceiling while Sam unwound the latest set of bandages from the still bleeding gash. 

The wound ran from near Dean’s groin nearly down to his knee. It could have just as easily sliced straight through his femoral artery. They hadn’t even been trying not to kill him. 

Dean jumped when Sam touched his leg. Sam waited for his brother to relax, not that Dean was actually calming down. He was just redirecting his tension. His knuckles were again white as he clutched the edge of the bed. He turned his head away to hide the pain he couldn’t mask. 

“Why’d you lie about the angels?” Sam asked.

Dean hesitated before answering and when he did, his voice was rough. “What’re you talking about?”

“An ‘army’ of angels? Dean, there were three of them. If I’d known—”

“You would’ve come and you would’ve had your little fainting spell there and we’d all be dead right now.”

Sam was glad he’d already taken a break from stitching the wound because Dean’s words knocked the wind out of him. He wanted to argue. More than anything, he wanted it not to be true even though he knew Dean was right. 

“There is something wrong with me,” Sam said when he thought he could trust his voice again. “And a lot of people could have died because of it.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Then what did you mean, Dean? And who’s Zeke?”

“How should I know? That’s a stupid ass name.”

“On the video, you told Zeke to keep me away.”

“You thought I said ‘Zeke’? Dude, you need to clean out your ears.”

“Then who were you talking to?” Sam asked. 

“Who do you think? The geek. I thought that pet prophet of ours could’ve talked some sense into you.”

“Since when do you call Kevin ‘geek’?”

“Since…” Dean’s voice trailed off before his attention snapped back to Sam. “Since I’m not an idiot. Homicidal angels had me chained to a frickin’ ceiling. I didn’t exactly want to slap a big ol’ neon sign on our prophet. Any other stupid questions?” 

Dean’s voice was becoming more ragged. Sam could tell the conversation was taking energy Dean didn’t have. They were both beyond exhausted and Sam wanted to let it drop, but still felt Dean wasn’t even hearing him. 

“For all I knew, there was an army of angels,” Sam said. “And I sent Cas and Charlie and that prophet we’re supposed to be protecting out there alone because I couldn’t walk up a flight of stairs.”

“But you feel okay now?”

“Right now, yeah, but that’s not the point, Dean. I almost had to watch you die. Again. If I can’t stop that… If I can’t...”

“You can. You were just having a bad day. It sucked ass for all of us. You’re getting better, Sammy. You really are. It’s just gonna take a little more time.”

Sam shook his head, not so much at Dean’s insistence, but at the fact that Dean was the one assuring him it would be okay. It wasn’t himself that Sam was worried about. 

Dean closed his eyes and tightened his grip on the sheets while Sam finished the last of the stitches. Sam glanced once more at the wound he knew Dean wouldn’t let him see again before laying the towel back over it. 

Tomorrow, Dean would pretend none of this had ever happened. He would keep fixating on every word Kushiel had said. He’d probably convince himself that he’d liked the way Puriel had touched him or at least that it hadn’t happened like he remembered. Like the times before, somehow, it would all be his fault. 

Sam knew all that and still didn’t know how to help his brother. There wasn’t anything he could say that Dean would hear. He knew first hand that no words could take it away. All they could do was move on.

“All done,” Sam said. 

Dean opened his eyes. They were glassy and his breathing uneven. A cold sweat glistened on his skin, but the corner of his lips turned up. 

“Hope you got in all your jollies playing nurse today,” Dean said. “’Cause I’m gonna kick your ass for it tomorrow.”

“Sure you are.”

Dean’s eyelids were already sagging by the time Sam pulled the covers up over him. He laid the blankets gently over Dean’s battered chest then perched back on the edge of the bed until his brother’s breathing evened out.

***

Dean’s body swayed with the movement of the chains, flung forward with each slash of the whip tearing into him until there was only bone scraped clean with a razor’s edge. The chains pulled in every direction until what little was left of him shattered. 

When he again had eyes to open, the razor set heavy in his palm. His newly made fingers curled around it. He tasted the blood that for once wasn’t his. It was hers. 

Her hair was redder, reflecting back the fires of the Pit that colored her pale skin pink. A clawed hand set on his shoulder and crept down his arm to guide his hand. 

Dean drew the dagger down her sternum. Charlie screamed. 

He jumped when the hand gripped him harder. Dean nearly threw himself off the bed. He looked up from the hand on his forearm to see Cas sitting beside him. 

Dean squinted at the bright lights of the room and cursed at the pulling of cuts and throbbing of bruises as he gingerly lied back down. 

“Damn it, Cas.”

His pulse continued to pound in his ears as he fixed his eyes on the ceiling above. He had every inch of it memorized by now. 

The longer he lay there the more his body protested. It wasn’t just lying down. It was existing. He was starting to regret turning down Zeke’s offer to heal him at least enough to take the edge off. 

All the stitches itched and only made him think more about what Puriel had said. She might have been nuttier than a fruitcake, but she’d been right. Stitching him back together didn’t fix a damn thing. 

He couldn’t actually see Cas’s eyes, but he could feel the gaze burrowing into him. It was the same intensity Puriel had used, only it was worse because it was Cas. 

“Your nightmares have returned.” 

They’d never left, not that Dean ever intended on admitting as much. It had been Mom, then the things in the dark, and then the Demon. It had been Dad and Sam dying in his arms. Then it was Hell, losing Cas, Purgatory, and the Trials. None of it even stood out anymore. At least he hadn’t thought it did. 

“I’m sorry we didn’t come sooner,” Cas said. “Both yesterday and back then.”

“Wish I could go back, too.” Dean ran his tongue over his cracked lip, biting it until it stopped trembling. “Wish I’d never gotten off that damn rack.”

Cas set his hand on the bed beside Dean’s forearm. Dean’s wrists were purple and scraped raw from the restraints. Cas touched his fingers to the discolored skin like he would have once done to heal him. 

“You have no concept as to how much was put on you,” Cas said.

“Yeah, boohoo. Dad held out. If I’d just been stronger…” 

“Aside from being impossible, it would have changed nothing.” Cas folded his hands in his lap and looked up towards the ceiling. “It was different for your father.”

“Right. Suppose you’re gonna tell me Alastair went easy on him.” 

“I wish I could, but no. However, what they learned from your father they used against you. You experienced more in those thirty years than he did in all his.”

“You’re lying,” Dean said. “You couldn’t even know that.”

“It was included in Kushiel’s report.”

“And here I thought Cushy didn’t care.” Dean scrubbed his hand over his face. “My dad was there because of me, you know?”

“Were you there because of Sam?”

“What? No. I did what I had to. It was my call. I’ve done a lot of stupid crap, but saving my little brother? I’m never gonna apologize for that. I just wish it didn’t have to be like this…that I could just tell him.” 

“Dean, he knows.”

Dean’s breath caught in his throat. “He does?”

“Of course. While he may not have approved, Sam understands why you made the deal.”

“The deal…you mean selling my soul?”

“Yes. What else would I mean?”

Dean knew Sam knew about Hell. Actually, he didn’t know what Sam knew about it and didn’t care. There was no changing that, but Zeke was different. 

“Nothing. Look, Cas, that doesn’t even matter. It was four years ago. The crap that’s happened since then could fill a book. Apparently a lot of them.”

“You returned four years ago, but for you, your time there spanned over forty. I’d thought it insignificant, but being here like this… I understand. That was more time than you’ve been on this earth.”

“More time than I will be.”

“You didn’t want me to come,” Cas said.

“I told you before, you should have left me.”

“Not in Hell. Yesterday.” Cas tilted his head. “You didn’t think I’d come.”

“I just didn’t want you to die.”

“And what about you?”

“Death doesn’t really seem to be an option for me.”

“You know that’s not true.”

“Isn’t it? I’m tired, Cas. I just keep hoping next time will be different, and each time I just get kicked in the balls again.”

“Which is considerably more painful than I had imagined.”

“Tell me about it.” 

“That was rhetorical?”

Dean chuckled. “Cas, you might just catch on to this whole human thing after all.”

“With your assistance, perhaps, but Sam thinks it best if I go.”

“Sam said that?”

“I can’t help but agree that I’m a danger to you all. Dean, they did this to you to get to me.”

“And if you’d been here…”

Dean stopped himself. None of this had been Cas’s fault. If Cas had been here where he belonged then none of this would have happened, but he had to play Zeke’s game until Sam was well enough to go in it alone. Otherwise, it would be Sam lying in this bed. 

“It’s alright, Dean. I understand.”

Dean clenched his jaw, knowing that he couldn’t trust his own words let alone the sound of his voice. He turned his head to face away on the pillow. He couldn’t watch Cas walk out again. 

“Just be careful, okay?”

Dean turned back when he didn’t hear a response. Cas had already gone. Dean buried his head back into his pillow, hoping to wake up somewhere else. 

***

Dean only felt more exhausted the next time he awoke. He groaned at the aching in his shoulder and didn’t bother to open his eyes. He was cold, but the blankets seemed too far away. 

He lay half awake and half asleep until he realized his shoulder ached because it was moving and he wasn’t the one doing it. Dean startled the rest of the way to waking. He jerked his arm away, instantly regretting the sharp movement. 

“Hey, careful there, Dean.”

Dean saw his brother hovering over him and rolled his eyes. “Dude, you’re telling me to be careful? Holy crap, Sam. What part of no more playing doctor don’t you understand?” 

Dean leaned up enough to grab the blankets Sam had folded down. He yanked them back up over himself with a defiant raise of his brow. 

“You look better,” Sam said.

“I look like crap.”

“That’s better than you looked yesterday. How’re you feeling?”

“Like I got sliced to hell by some crazy ass angels. Now knock it off.”

“Knock what off?”

Dean motioned towards the gauze and bandages that Sam had laid out on the table. There was also a chair pulled up beside his bed, which wasn’t happening. It was hard enough to swing looking okay while he was awake. He sure couldn’t do it while he was asleep, too.

“All of this. I warned you to get your candy stripper jollies in last night. You keep fondling me today and I will kick your ass.”

“They’re candy ‘stripers’, Dean. Not strippers.”

“Not the good ones.”

Dean’s own words caught up with him. The last thing he actually wanted to talk about right now was stripping. Between monster babies and grabby angels, he’d be sticking to his porn collection for the foreseeable future. 

Sam looked like he was going to offer to talk about it or one of the many other subjects Dean had no interest in touching with a ten foot pole. Fortunately for them both, Sam saved himself getting punched in the face by looking around the room instead. 

“Where’s Cas?” Sam asked.

“Did something happen to him already?”

“No, I just thought he was sitting up here with you.”

Dean narrowed his eyes, not at his brother, but the angel hiding inside. “We need to talk.”

Sam sat in the chair. “Yeah, sure, Dean.” 

“No, *we* need to talk.”

Sam’s eyes flashed blue and his body stiffened. “Have you changed your mind about me healing you?”

“You’re here to heal my brother. Controlling him? What the hell, Zeke? This wasn’t part of the deal. You stay buried, you fix Sam, and you get the hell out. That’s it.”

“We also agreed that Castiel could not stay here.” 

“No, we didn’t agree on crap. You made me choose between my brother or Cas.”

“And you chose your brother.” Zeke looked at him like he was an idiot. “Unless you’ve changed your mind, I don’t see the problem.”

“The problem is that Sam ain’t your damn meat puppet, and you let Cas and Charlie come after me alone. They could’ve gotten themselves killed saving my sorry ass.”

“Castiel I could not control, but Sam… You asked me to keep him away. Was that not what you wanted?”

“You angels and your goddamn logic.” Dean sagged back down into his pillow. “Just no more joy rides without me calling you out. Got it?”

“Yes, I got it.”

“And Zeke?”

“Yes?”

“Thanks for looking out for my little brother.”

Sam’s body relaxed. “So what did you want to talk about?”

“Nothing. I’m good.”

“You’re good? Really?”

Dean slowly sat up and scooted back. He resisted the urge to slap Sam away when Sam readjusted his pillow so that Dean could rest against it. He didn’t want Sam hovering, but he wasn’t exactly ready for complex maneuvers like simultaneously sitting and moving a pillow. 

“Yeah,” Dean said. “As good as ever.”

“It’s okay if you’re not. I’m not.”

There was a desperation in Sam’s eyes that stopped Dean short from blowing him off. Dean focused on the folds of the sheets as he ran his hand through his mussed hair. 

“Sam, I’m sorry. I’m sorry you saw that crap. I’m sorry you were stuck here while it was going down. Man, I’m just sorry.”

“What are you talking about, Dean? You don’t have anything to be sorry for.”

Dean chuckled dryly. “You’re kidding, right? This whole crapfest is on me.” 

“What is?”

“I don’t know. Everything. Nothing. It doesn’t matter. That crap back at the farmhouse? It happened and it sucked ass. You saw and heard…everything. And you’re still here, and Charlie and Kevin are as stupid as you. So, yeah, I’m good.”

“Dean, I saw you give up back there. What happened to seeing this through together?”

“We will, Sammy.”

“But?”

“No buts. I mean come on, let’s face it. That wasn’t even close to the worst thing that’s ever happened to either of us. I’ve always come out swinging, haven’t I?”

“You almost didn’t.”

“Dude, when we have to think about how many times we’ve died, almost doesn’t count anymore. Believe me, the next time the angels come up to bat, I’m not gonna be the one walking away bloody.”

“You better not be,” Charlie said from the doorway. “I’m already officially going to have nightmares forever thanks to you two. But I guess it’s nice to change up the black ooze with getting to chase angels around with a super awesome ray gun.”

“You dreamed about angels and ray guns?” Sam asked. 

“Damn right. It would’ve been even cooler if it had been like a machine gun loaded with magical angel bomb bullets, but the point is, no one messes with my boys.”

Dean stared back down at the blankets, choking down the flashes from his own nightmares along with the sick taste in his mouth. He could still see the blood on his hands. He didn’t know why they couldn't or why they were still here with him after what they'd seen, but he knew where he’d be without them. It was nowhere good.

“So anyway, check it out, bitches.” Charlie waved two bags at them. “Breakfast and Movie Sign.”

Dean hadn’t even noticed that they’d moved the television to the front of his room until Charlie dropped the bag of DVD rentals on top of it. She set the other bag on the bed beside him and started setting out cardboard containers. 

The smell of bacon stirred a hunger in Dean’s stomach that he hadn’t realized was there. The last piece of food he’d seen was an apple and those didn’t count. He still stared dumbly at the large container Charlie set on his lap. 

“What the hell is all this?” Dean asked. 

“It’s like a mega breakfast combo,” Charlie said as she flipped through the DVDs. “It has basically everything. We figured you had to be hungry, and even if you’re not you have to eat it anyway because I said so. And because you need to get your strength back.”

“Okay. I get that it’s breakfast and it smells great, really, but why’s it here? And what’s up with the Mystery Science Theater?”

Charlie passed one of the containers to Sam then settled on the bed beside Dean with the remote. She grabbed a container for herself and leaned back next to him. 

“What?” she asked. “Like we need an excuse to hang with our favorite hunter?”

Sam shrugged innocently when Dean quirked his brow at him. “Charlie isn’t leaving until you’re better, and I’m not leaving ever, so we might as well watch some movies until you’re back on your feet.”

“Fine,” Dean said. “But you’re washing my sheets after you get your gritty granola junk in them.” 

“Like you’re not gonna get grease stains all over the blanket.”

Dean’s bruised ribs protested his chuckle, but the soft smile remained on his face. His smiled widened enough to tug at the healing splits in his lips when he saw Kevin poke his head in. 

“Grab a chair and get your ass in here, Kev.”

Kevin disappeared then returned with a chair from down the hall. He set it next to Charlie’s side of the bed before grabbing one of the food containers like he already knew what was in it. They were all in on this. Dean didn’t know what to think about that. 

“It’s about time you got down here,” Charlie told Kevin. “You almost missed one of the best parts.”

Kevin wrinkled his face as he looked at the television then back at Charlie. “The movie hasn’t even started yet.”

“Hello, previews. It’s like all the best parts shrunken down into bite-sized movies. Talk about magical or at least shrink ray.”

“They’re commercials,” Kevin said.

“Are you always this much fun at parties?”

Dean shook his head as he settled in to eat his breakfast. He’d been dreading a day of lying alone on his throbbing back, but he barely noticed the pain as he listened to his family discuss previews for movies that had come out years ago. 

Things wouldn’t be right until Zeke was gone and Cas was back. They’d probably still be screwed then. They always were. But as far as days above ground went, this one was shaping up to be pretty damn good.


End file.
